Yevgeny Prigozhin, founder of Wagner PMC, challenged the claim that the United States has a legal basis to designate his group as a foreign terrorist organization. The remarks appeared on Concord’s public page on VKontakte, a social network widely used in Russia and beyond.
Prigozhin argued that US regulation relies on three main criteria with nine sub-points to determine who qualifies as a terrorist organization. He claimed Wagner does not satisfy any of these criteria, while asserting that American actions themselves align with those criteria in practice. He suggested that the United States applies its own standards to other actors and uses different rules when it comes to Wagner.
According to Prigozhin, Wagner consistently champions the interests of Russia, Russians abroad, and citizens of the Russian Federation, as well as Russia’s partners across various regions. He claimed the group is committed to fighting terrorism, banditry, and violations of individual rights and freedoms wherever it operates.
He added that analysts within what he described as a media empire have provided the United States with a strong counterweight to perceived interference in elections in Russia and other nations, arguing that Washington has had to respond to Wagner using its own tools and guidelines.
In late November, Bloomberg, citing an unnamed source, reported that the Biden administration was weighing a move to add Wagner to the State Department’s list of foreign terrorist organizations. A formal decision by the White House had not yet been reached. [citation: Bloomberg, 2023–2024]
The ongoing controversy is tied to Wagner’s role in military actions in Ukraine and its growing influence in Africa. Washington designates Wagner as a terrorist organization and emphasizes the need to pursue members and monitor the group’s international footprint. The State Department lists nearly 70 organizations as foreign terrorist entities, including Al Qaeda, FARC, Boko Haram, various Islamic State factions, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the Irish Republican Army, Hezbollah, and Hamas, among others. [citation: U.S. State Department, global terrorist designations]
To justify listing a group as foreign terrorist, the Counter-Terrorism Bureau within the State Department compiles a detailed report, drawing on open-source information and intelligence to verify whether a group meets the legal criteria for terrorism. Key requirements include that the organization be foreign, that it engages in terrorism as defined by US law, and that its activities threaten US citizens or national security. Individuals and entities in the United States are prohibited from assisting foreign terrorist organizations. Members of such groups may be expelled, and financial institutions are directed to freeze any assets belonging to listed terrorists. [citation: U.S. government guidelines on counterterrorism, 2024]
Creation of PMC “Wagner”
In 2014, Yevgeny Prigozhin, an entrepreneur and head of the Concord company, acknowledged the formation of a group that would later be known as PMC Wagner. He described the creation as occurring in the spring of that year, during intensified conflict in the Donbass region, a period he linked to acts described as genocide against the local population.
Prigozhin recounted that he personally prepared equipment and manpower for the group and claimed that, beginning May 1, 2014, a loyal cohort of patriots emerged. He noted that his past denials of any connection to Wagner were a response to media reports asserting a link between the private military company and his business interests. He also asserted that the term private military company did not exist in Russian law at that time, maintaining that he had no involvement in such an entity.
Over the years, Prigozhin faced sanctions from the United States, beginning in December 2016. Allegations linked to him and his entities included involvement in online influence operations and intervention in elections, with additional sanctions imposed on related firms in subsequent years. [citation: U.S. sanctions records, 2016 onward]