The Foreign Affairs Committee of the UK Parliament strongly chastised the British government in a report it released on Wednesday for failing to acknowledge the substantial threat presented by Russia’s Wagner private military corporation (PMC) for almost ten years.
In its report, “Guns for Gold: The Wagner Network Exposed,” the committee claims that the government “underplayed and underestimated the Wagner Network’s activities, as well as the security implications of its significant expansion.”
One of the issues, according to the paper, is that the British government saw Wagner “through the prism of Europe,” which the committee considers to be a “significant failing” given the “geographic spread and the impact of its activities on UK interests further abroad.”
According to the assessment, Wagner’s actions in Ukraine “are not representative of the network’s operations globally,” and the PMC had been operational in at least seven countries for up to ten years before the UK began investing more resources in understanding it in 2022.
The study finds that it is rather disappointing that it took so long and that the government still gives countries outside of Ukraine such little consideration. Given that this network is known for changing its shape, we are even less prepared to adapt to its evolution.
The document goes on to say that “the Government’s failure to address the Wagner Network leads us to conclude that there is a fundamental lack of knowledge of, and policy on, other malign PMCs.”
The report goes on to say that the UK’s efforts to sanction individuals and groups associated with Wagner are “underwhelming in the extreme,” particularly in light of comparable actions taken by the US and the EU, which have sanctioned roughly twice as many people and organisations in the network as the UK has.
According to the report, the government has not made clear what it is doing to address the network’s influence and impunity outside of Ukraine. According to the statement, “We have not seen any direct evidence of any effort by the Government to monitor the activities of the Network in other countries.”
The investigation calls for the government to learn more about Wagner’s operations “in a wider range of countries” and calls for “faster and harder” punishments against people involved in the network, even going so far as to offer a list. It further calls on the government to “urgently proscribe the Wagner Network as a terrorist organisation” and provide an alternative for countries relying on the PMC’s assistance.