Leaderless Wagner 'Extremely Dangerous', Says Top U.S. Justice Envoy

Washington D.C./30.08.23/Turan:    The U.S. Global Criminal Justice Ambassador-at-large, Beth Van Schaack, on Tuesday said that Washington is 'still trying to understand' exactly what happened with the death of Yevgeny Prigozhin, a prominent mercenary figure.

"All indications seem to be that there was some sort of an explosive on board that brought that plane down. We can only speculate as to who caused that, but I think information will continue to emerge over time," she said when asked by TURAN's Washington correspondent whether the U.S. got any closer to determining what brought down Prigozhin’s plane.

Ambassador Van Schaack was briefing the reporters at the State Department's Washington Foreign Press Center on U.S. policy on global justice and accountability, as well as Wasbington's efforts to hold Russia accountable for crimes in Ukraine.

Asked by TURAN about the recent U.S. decision to share evidence of Russian war crimes with ICC, she said, while Washington does not discuss the specifics of requests that come in — in part to respect the confidentiality of the work of the prosecutor and his investigative trajectory — it is "looking for ways" to be supportive of the ICC investigation.

Regarding Wagner, she said "what we are left with, is a leaderless organization, which is extremely dangerous." 

She went on to elaborate:  "Wagner is essentially a malign force anywhere that Wagner personnel have been deployed, and we’ve seen the results of those deployments in Mali, in the Central African Republic, in Libya, in Syria, and elsewhere... They’re brought in to enhance security and they end up undermining security. We’ve also seen extreme violations of international human rights committed by Wagner forces in civilian populations".

Anywhere that Wagner has been deployed, "there have been death and destruction to follow," as the Ambassador put it.

"Now we have a situation where that organization does not have a leader, and we understand that those forces are still out in the field, and so it’s an extremely uncertain situation," Van Schaack added.

TURAN also asked the top U.S. justice envoy about the reason why Russia has never been sanctioned for blowing up Kakhovka dam, the largest manmade disaster in decades that went completely unpunished. 

She responded: "When it comes to the dam, that of course was an environmental disaster. I understand that there are still investigations being undertaken within Ukraine to understand the cause of what happened, and so that is why there has not been any accountability measures yet with respect to who precisely may have been responsible for that act."

Alex Raufoglu