Wagner CEO Yevgeny Prigozhin issued a short letter to the White House on Saturday asking what crime his company is being accused of after Washington announced new sanctions against the group, Reuters reported.

White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said Friday that Wagner, who supported Russian troops in the invasion of Ukraine and credited himself with Russia’s successes on the battlefield, would be designated a transnational criminal organization.

In the English-language letter addressed to Kirby and published in the Telegram channel of the press service of the founder of the PMC “Wagner” Evgeny Prigozhin, it is said: “Dear Mr. Kirby, please explain what crime the PMC Wagner committed?”

Kirby called Wagner’s group “a criminal organization that commits mass atrocities and human rights violations.”

The White House said last month that Wagner received a shipment of weapons from North Korea to help bolster Russian forces in Ukraine.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of North Korea called the report unfounded, and Prigozhin then denied that he had received such a supply of weapons, calling the report “gossip and speculation.”

Washington restricted trade with Wagner in 2017 and again in December in an effort to limit access to weapons.

In December 2021, the European Union introduced its own sanctions against the “Wagner” PMC, which operated in Syria, Libya, the Central African Republic, Sudan, Mozambique and Mali, as well as in Ukraine.