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The United States on Friday designated Russia's Wagner mercenary group a "transnational criminal organization," piling pressure on the private Russian army fighting in Ukraine. White House national security spokesman John Kirby said Wagner, controlled by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a businessman close to President Vladimir Putin, has about 50,000 fighters in Ukraine, 80% of them drawn from prisons. Kirby showed U.S. intelligence photographs of North Korea supplying arms to Wagner for its Ukraine operations, and said the private army has become a rival to the formal Russian military. The photographs, from Nov. 18-19, show Russian rail cars entering North Korea, picking up a load of infantry rockets and missiles, and returning to Russia, he said. He said the U.S. Treasury was formally designating Wagner as a transnational criminal organization, putting it on the same level as Italian mafia groups and Japanese and Russian organized crime syndicates.
The designation will allow the wider application of sanctions on the group's sprawling global network, which includes mercenary operations as well as businesses in Africa and elsewhere. Wagner "is a criminal organization that is committing widespread atrocities and human rights abuses," Kirby said. "We will work relentlessly to identify, disrupt, expose and target those who are assisting Wagner." Kirby also said the U.S. had presented its intelligence on Wagner's North Korean purchase to the United Nations Security Council's unit on North Korea sanctions. The arms transfers from North Korea are in direct violation of UN Security Council resolutions, Kirby said.