US to declare Russia's Wagner Group a transnational criminal organisation

The classification allows the US and other countries to restrict the international business of the mercenary group and its worldwide network of supporters, reported German Press Agency (dpa).

The US government will impose concrete sanctions against the Wagner Group next week, Kirby said. He did not give details of the sanctions.

Wagner is a criminal organisation responsible for atrocities and human rights abuses in Ukraine and around the world, Kirby said, adding that there was a growing rivalry emerging between the Wagner Group and the Russian military and other Russian ministries. For example, Washington is seeing growing tensions between Wagner and the Russian Defence Ministry, he said.

North Korea has also supplied weapons to Wagner in recent weeks, Kirby said. On Nov 18, he said, a train travelled from Russia to North Korea, was loaded by North Korea, to return to Russia the next day. There was visual evidence of this, he said. It is assumed that there will be further deliveries of weapons from North Korea.

The Wagner Group belongs to Yevgeny Prigozhin, a close confidant of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Some 50,000 soldiers are currently fighting in Ukraine in the ranks of the private army, Kirby said. Among them are 10,000 mercenaries and 40,000 prisoners.

"Our mutual relations can now be described as a 'confrontation between criminal clans', Prigozhin said in reaction to the news on Friday evening.

He had recently boasted that Wagner was even buying US weapons despite the sanctions imposed on Russia for the war in Ukraine.

The close Putin ally is also wanted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the US on a bounty for interfering in the presidential election.