We see the evidence of broken government all around us, wherever we look. But it is here too, in the areas where people do not generally think to look This includes the British response to Wagner - a failure on all counts 🖊️ IanDunt
It is an extremely mercurial arrangement, but the simplified version works like this. Russia supports Wagner, including with logistics, weapons and ammunition. Wagner then supports Russia’s geopolitical aims by propping up its favoured regimes. The regimes support Wagner by offering them lucrative deals on their natural resources in exchange for their services.
The second failure is one of preparation. For 10 years, the Government has failed to take Wagner seriously. When it did think about it, it was through the prism of Europe and in particular Ukraine, but this failed to understand the importance of the African operations for its wealth creation. The third failure is one of action. The Government has sought to sanction key Wagner personnel, including Prigozhin. But when the committee analysed the list of Wagner-connected individuals, it found the UK had sanctioned just 34 per cent of them. The US has sanctioned 61 per cent and the EU 68 per cent. When it came to Wagner-connected entities, the UK had sanctioned just 13.5 per cent of them, compared to 43 per cent for the EU and 81 per cent for the US.
But actually it’s worse than that. In an act of moral and strategic insanity, we actively provided a loophole in our own sanctions regime to allow Wagner to try and silence British citizens who scrutinised it. In January 2023, the Treasury granted a special licence to Prigozhin so he could circumvent UK sanctions and launch a libel campaign against the founder of the investigative organisation Bellingcat, Eliot Higgins.
Higgins had done what the Government had not done. He had taken Wagner seriously and done serious work to understand its activities. His reward was to be sued for libel by Wagner and to have his own government bypass its sanctions regime to facilitate it. “The Government left us with very little confidence that those British nationals pursued by the Wagner Network receive any meaningful support from the British Government,” the committee found.
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