Ukrainians who fled the country during the war and say they were victims of Russia’s Wagner paramilitary group will sue in Britain against an organization believed to be close to the Moscow regime, one of the lawyers representing them said. , reports News.ro with reference to AFP.

Mercenaries of the Wagner groupPhoto: Viktor Antonyuk / Sputnik / Profimedia

The lawsuit, launched against the Wagner group and its leader Yevgeny Prigozhin, “will be taken to the High Court in London” and seeks financial compensation, Jason McCue of the law firm McCue Jury and Partners said during a hearing before the court. The Foreign Affairs Committee of the House of Commons.

“This is the first time in the world that Wagner and his people are being sued by victims for terrorism, the use of military weapons and Putin’s illegal war,” he said, emphasizing the boldness of the approach.

“This is a historic moment, but soon there will be other actions in the United States and Great Britain,” he said.

Western countries have for years suspected Wagner’s group of conducting key Kremlin operations in various theaters of war, and Moscow has always denied these claims.

However, at the end of September, Yevgeny Prigozhin, a businessman close to the Kremlin, admitted that he founded the Wagner group in 2014, calling the organization a “pillar” of protecting Russian interests.

The group’s presence in Ukraine dates back to 2014, when its people were spotted together with pro-Russian separatists in the east of the country. At first, they were not very present at the beginning of the Russian invasion of the country, from February 2022, but now the mercenaries of the “Wagner” PMC have become, according to experts, an important presence of the Russian army, which has suffered serious blows. defeats of recent weeks.

Wagner’s mercenaries, whose presence has been documented for eight years in Syria in support of the Assad regime and in Libya, are also present in the Central African Republic and Mali, where they are regularly accused of abuses against civilians.

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