Five Wagner foot soldiers have been found guilty of an arson attack on a London warehouse linked to Ukraine.
The warehouse was torched on 20 March 2024 because it held StarKink equipment and humanitarian aid to be sent to Ukraine, the fire caused around £1 million of damage.
Wagner Group is a Russian mercenary group funded by Vladimir Putin, Dylan Earl 20, Jake Reeves 23, organised the plan.
They are also behind a plot to set fire to a Mayfair restaurant and wine shop which is owned by Russian billionaire Evgeny Chichvarkin with a plan to kidnap him.
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Three others were convicted at the Old Bailey on Monday for the parts they played in the Leyton warehouse attack.
Jakeem Rose, 23, Nii Mensah, 23, and Ugnius Asmena, 20, were recruited and they were at the Layton warehouse when the blaze started.
Prosecutor Duncan Penny KC called it “deliberate and calculated criminality at the behest of foreign influence.”
In 2023 the former Home Secretary Suella Braverman has announced that Wagner Group is now been officially proscribed as a terrorist organisation in the UK.
It is now illegal for anyone in the UK to make any support for the Wagner mercenary group or to be part of the outfit, which comes weeks after Yevgeny Prigozhin was allegedly killed in a plane crash in Russia.
If a person in the UK does support the group or are a member can be jailed for up to 14-years in prison.
Braverman said at the time that Wagner are “violent and destructive organisation which has acted as a military tool of Vladimir Putin’s Russia overseas.”
Braverman added, “Wagner‘s continuing destabilising activities only continue to serve the Kremlin‘s political goals.
“They are terrorists, plain and simple – and this proscription order makes that clear in UK law.”
