The US
Treasury Department
is expected
to designate
the Russian mercenary organization,
the Bognor Group,
as a transnational criminal organization
with links to North
Korea Russian President
Vladimir Putin
has increasingly relied on Wagner
to carry out operations in Ukraine
As we have said publicly.
North Korea delivered
infantry rockets and missiles into Russia
for use by Wagner
toward the end of last year.
Bodner is a criminal organization
that is continuing wide
sorry,
committing widespread
atrocities and human rights abuses.
CNN's Oren Liebermann
joins us from the Pentagon now or
and what does this new designation mean?
First, it means that Wagner
and those entities associated with it,
perhaps not only in Ukraine,
but other places
Wagner operates, such as Africa.
Syria will face more sanctions
from the US government.
It's also a strong statement
about how the US views Wagner,
a mercenary group used by Russia,
as an additional force.
The US recently declassified photos,
it says, are of a Russian train
crossing into North Korea.
About five cars on that Russian train
picking up ammo.
You can see the images there
taking that ammo from North Korea
and bringing it back
to the fight in Ukraine.
That's the part of this
that makes for ordinary
transnational criminal organization
The U.S.
had talked about this
just a couple of weeks ago,
but late last year.
And here, they say,
is the evidence, the photographs
that back that up.
Interestingly, it was Wagner
that was using the artillery
and the ammo provided here,
not the Russian Ministry of Defense.
And that gets out of how
Wagner is operating,
essentially
a mercenary organization
that is competing with at times
and operating
independently of
the Russian military, primarily
in Bermuda, a town in eastern Ukraine.
That's where we've seen Wagner operating.
According to the US,
with a very
high percentage of convicts,
also filling in the shortages of,
frankly, bodies in the Russian military
that Russia is looking for
and suffering heavy casualties as well.
This is another step against Wagner
coming from the U.S..
Nic Robertson is CNN's international
diplomatic editor.
Jill Dougherty is a CNN contributor
and former CNN Moscow bureau chief.
Nic, what's the significance?
What will change
now that Bognor is designated
as a criminal organization?
It's going to make it harder for them
to do business around the world.
They've become an effective extension
of the Russian state
in some ways, extending their influence
and moneymaking abilities from
from Africa to the Middle East in Syria.
And they've become a very effective
fighting force in Ukraine.
So blunting them
is to
blunting their abilities
and trying to cut off money to them
is to blunt their effectiveness
and they're effective for Putin.
Jill, we heard from
John Kirby today
that there is some concern
within the Russian government
about the recruiting practices
of the Wagner group.
80% of their mercenaries
or fighters are convicts.
There's also some disagreement
over taking credit
for the fight in Salvador.
How fraught is the relationship
between the Wagner group and promotion
and the Russian government,
military and Putin?
You know, there's definitely tension
between them because as you the Wagner
group, used to be kind of in the shadows
before all of this came out.
And so now they're very much public
and they have been claiming
that they were the people
who went into Solider
and defeated the Ukrainians, etc.,
and criticizing
the regular Russian military
for not being able to do that,
for essentially screwing up the war.
So this is really,
I think, a significant back and forth
between those two groups.
It looks as if
now you've got the government,
Putin's government coming out
war on the side of the regular military.
But Wagner is really important.
It is estimated
that they have
50,000 fighters in Ukraine right now.
10,000 are contractors
and the other 40 are prisoners
who are let out in order to fight.
And they have money.
They're backed by oligarchs there.
They're an important part
of what
Russia is trying to do in Ukraine,
unfortunately. Hmm.
Nick, we've learned that CIA chief U.S.
intel
officials are briefing
or have briefed President Zelensky
about this coming Russian offensive.
What do we know
about what that would look like?
The potential is for Russia
to have reequiped
and retrained a large number of troops.
We know that they said
that they recruited
about 300,000 forces
towards the end of last year.
It's believed
they committed
about 100,000 of those
to the fight in Ukraine already.
There's potential
only an estimated
a hundred to 150,000 of them left
who could
well have been given the training,
the all those others that have been used
as cannon fodder on the front lines
haven't been given.
Just this week,
President Putin
visited an armaments factory.
He commended them for that.
Their work told them how important it was
mentioned that they were working
20 473 shifts a day
to keep production of armaments high
because that's what's required.
So, you know, it seems at the moment that
Russia is getting itself
ready to launch another offensive.
And the clock is ticking on that.
And that's made the conversations
in Germany
about the possibility of sending tanks
to Ukraine.
All the more pressing
Ukraine is listening
to that sort of intelligence.
And unlike the time
before the war, a year ago,
when they said
they didn't believe
an offensive was coming,
this is much more critical.
Russia if it comes back with a big push,
with better
trained, better equipped forces,
better organized than previously.
This is this is a potential worrying and
and dangerous threat for Ukraine
right now on the front lines in the east.
Jill, is it likely.
Are there signs that
that Russia
will be able to come
with that better
trained, better equipped,
better strategized, better led
fighting force in the spring?
They may have learned
something, you know,
from bringing
in during the last mobilization
that started in September
when you had a lot of regular
guys from big cities
being pulled into the military.
They were
there were multiple reports
and we've talked about this
where they went into the field
with very limited kit,
you know, not enough weapons,
not enough supplies.
Their families were providing
some of what they needed.
But so far,
it appears that
the Kremlin has improved on that.
But it's still there
the way they command their troops.
And the preparation
is not
at all on the level of what Neato does.
So it's it's a matter of personnel
and weapons and strategy
And that's where the Russians often fail.