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UK targets Russian-backed mercenaries and defense industry in major sanctions package

Sakege November 7, 2024

The UK government announced its largest sanctions package against Russia since May 2023 on November 7, focusing on the Russian defense industry and mercenary groups.

The new 56 listings include the Moscow-backed mercenary group Africa Corps, private companies linked to the Wagner Group and food suppliers. Russiawar through weapons and dual-use goods.

Russia has long used private military groups, most notably Wagner, to support friendly regimes in Africa and plunder natural resources. Their activities have been accompanied by widespread human rights violations.

The Russian Defense Ministry launched the Africa Corps in 2024 to replace Wagner after the group’s demise. brief rebellion in June 2023 and the death of its leader, Yevgeny Prigozhinin a plane crash in August of that year. The UK is now the first G7 country to sanction the Africa Corps, a group that bears the same name as Nazi forces in Africa during World War II.

The Africa Corps, two other private mercenary groups and 11 individuals linked to the Kremlin have been sanctioned for human rights abuses and threats to peace and security in Libya, Mali and the Central African Republic. UK Foreign Office said in a statement.

“Today’s actions will continue to roll back the Kremlin’s corrosive foreign policy, undermine Russia’s attempts to foment instability across Africa and disrupt the supply of vital equipment to Putin’s war machine,” Foreign Secretary United Kingdom, David Lammy.

“And crush the illicit international networks that Russia has worked so hard to forge.”

The list also includes 28 entities based in China, Central Asia and Turkey that provide “machine tools, microelectronics, drone components, ball bearings or other goods to the Russian military-industrial complex.”

The United Kingdom sanctioned Denis Sergeev of Russian military intelligence (GRU), also known as “Sergej Fedotov”, who was linked by British authorities to the Novichok poisoning of former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in 2018 in Salisbury, UK.