'Noose tightening around Wagner': UK's 'terrorist' designation to have major implications worldwide
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00:00 The government in the United Kingdom is set to designate the Russian mercenary group,
00:04 Wagner, a terrorist organisation.
00:07 Explaining the decision, the country's Interior Minister, Suella Braverman, described Wagner
00:12 as a tool of Vladimir Putin's Russia and a threat to global security.
00:17 To discuss, I'm joined now on the line by Patrick Berry.
00:20 He's a senior lecturer in security at the University of Bath in the UK and he's also
00:25 a former analyst at NATO.
00:28 Welcome to the programme, sir.
00:29 Thanks for joining us.
00:30 Good afternoon.
00:31 It's been a really turbulent few weeks for the Wagner group with the death of its leader,
00:36 Yevgeny Prigozhin, and it is unclear now in what form, if any, the group will continue
00:43 to operate.
00:44 So why do you think the UK government took this decision now?
00:48 Yeah, it's been coming, in fairness.
00:51 It's been mooted for about a year and obviously the UK governments have already sanctioned
00:56 members of the Wagner group.
00:57 So it's been a noose that's been tightening around them.
01:00 I think essentially there's a couple of takes away to look at this.
01:04 Domestically, obviously, it sends a strong message that anyone who is thinking about
01:08 supporting the group, not only joining them, which is obviously one of the things that
01:12 can bring a 14 year prison sentence after they've been prescribed, but also anyone supporting
01:16 them in any way.
01:17 So from financing, recruiting, holding meetings, even displaying a Wagner banner is now punishable
01:23 as under prescribed law.
01:26 So that's one element.
01:27 I think the other one is also to do with resourcing.
01:29 Now that they've been prescribed as a terrorist organization, along with al-Qaeda or Boko
01:34 Haram and others, of course, the state is able to allocate resources in a different
01:40 way and in a more intense way should they so need it.
01:42 For example, the Met police are involved in the investigating Russian war crimes in Irpin
01:48 and Buka especially, and potentially Wagner could have been involved in some of those
01:53 or in other locations.
01:55 Maybe this gives them more power, more powers and more resources to investigate that angle
01:59 too.
02:00 So it's essentially about and the final one is about messaging and the ripple effect across
02:05 the international community.
02:06 If the UK are opening investigation into, let's say, financing, they can draw on the
02:13 support, more support expertise from their international partners now that it's being
02:18 prescribed in the UK.
02:19 So it's got a number of different elements.
02:21 That's really interesting, but I think one of the things that's surprising about this
02:26 is that we don't really associate Wagner operations with the United Kingdom.
02:33 Does this suggest that perhaps in the past Wagner was trying to move money maybe through
02:38 the UK?
02:39 Would it have impact on sort of financial, its financial capacity to organize itself
02:44 as well?
02:45 Well, we know that London was obviously a transit areas as a major international financial
02:51 hub and with a substantial number of Russians living here, especially in up until Brexit
02:58 and then the war again.
03:00 But, you know, it's been a conduit for moving finances around.
03:06 So you would expect, therefore, that yes, I don't have any inside information, of course,
03:10 but you would expect that it would have been an area that Wagner were interested in.
03:13 Now, once they're sanctioned, that becomes much more difficult.
03:16 This would give the UK government the next level of resource and powers because it now
03:21 falls under the counter-terrorist financing.
03:23 So they've got more power to investigate into that.
03:27 But I think it was coming anyway.
03:29 Maybe other countries will follow suit now as well.
03:31 That is an interesting one.
03:33 And a broader final thought from you.
03:36 You know, several years ago, Russia was accused of a campaign to undermine British democracy
03:41 and British elections.
03:42 I wonder whether beyond the Wagner group itself, how much we actually know today about the
03:48 extent of the Kremlin's influence in the UK.
03:52 Yeah, and that remains to be seen.
03:56 Of course, you had the Defence Intelligence and Security Committee report back, I think
04:01 it was about 18 months ago, saying that the threat from Russia had been completely misunderstood
04:09 and hadn't even been resourced against to develop an understanding.
04:13 It was that bad.
04:14 So that was their critical analysis of the situation.
04:18 I think it's probably more under hand in terms of internal security now and the threat.
04:25 But that threat is evolving.
04:27 We saw recently in its open source reporting that some highly sensitive sites in the UK
04:32 were subject to a hack.
04:34 It was released in the papers on Sunday, I believe.
04:36 So there's certainly that area of constant competition is ongoing, and especially in
04:42 the cyber domain, Russia remains very active.
04:45 Really interesting analysis.
04:46 Thanks very much indeed.
04:47 Barry talking to us there from the University of Bath in the UK. Thank you.
04:51 Thank you, sir.