The junta in power in Bamako threatens to resort to the services of this suspected mercenary society to be close to Vladimir Putin.
Le Monde with AFP
The European Union (EU) found “a consensus” among its 27 Member States to sanction the Russian mercenary group Wagner, whose Westerners fear an intervention in Mali, announced the leader of European diplomacy, Josep Borrell , Monday, November 15th. The junta in power in Bamako threatens to resort to the services of this private company suspected of being close to Russian President, Vladimir Putin.
“There is a consensus to take restrictive measures against this group. They will be decided as soon as the work at the technical level has been completed. Specific proposals for designating individuals and entities will be evaluated,” said M Borrell at the end of a meeting of European Foreign Ministers in Brussels. It has evoked a possible adoption of these measures, claimed in particular by France at the next meeting of Ministers, scheduled for 13 December.
The leader of French diplomacy, Jean-Yves Le Drian, explained that it was both “sanctions against the members of Wagner Society and against companies who work directly” with it. “There is a threat to Mali,” he stressed at a press point. France has warned Moscow that the deployment of Russian mercenaries in the Sahelian Saharan band would be “unacceptable”, during a meeting Friday of the Foreign Affairs and Defense of the two countries in Paris.
“Widely documented abuses”
“The abuses committed with impunity [by these mercenaries] in other countries are widely documented,” said the spokesman for the Quai d’Orsay, Anne-Claire Legendre, with reference to the Central African Republic. Their presence has been reported in Ukraine, Syria and Africa. For many NGOs and journalists, Russia uses the Wagner Group and its mercenaries to serve its interests abroad, what the Kremlin denies.
The 27 EU Member States have also agreed, Monday, to adopt a legal framework for sanctions against the junta in power in Mali, in the wake of those announced by the Economic Community of the States of West Africa (Cédéao). The Cédéao imposed on 7 November individual sanctions to the members of the junta because of the delay in the organization of the elections which must devote the return of civilians to power after the double putsch of August 2020 and May 2021.