The United States has said it will designate Russia’s Wagner mercenary group as a “transnational criminal organisation”, piling pressure on the private army that has recruited tens of thousands of Russian prisoners to fight in Ukraine.
White House national security spokesperson John Kirby said on Friday that Wagner, controlled by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a businessman close to Russian President Vladimir Putin, had about 50,000 fighters in Ukraine, 80 percent of them drawn from Russia’s prison system.
