‘They were trained to cut off limbs and burn people alive’: George Clooney urges to dismantle Wagner Group

The celebrity wrote about this in a column for The Economist.

Hollywood actor, director and co-president of the Clooney Justice Foundation, George Clooney, believes that the West can kill the Wagner virus. But he is worried that the future of the criminal Russian armed group remains unclear as the whereabouts and status of the PMC and Yevgeny Prigozhin himself are "shrouded in secrecy".

"What is clear is that Wagner has been one of Russia’s most successful foreign-policy initiatives during the past decade. The group has allowed Russia to expand its influence into unstable states, particularly in Africa, advancing its economic interests, often through violent means. Wagner’s perceived instability at the moment offers America and the broader international community an unprecedented opportunity to counter Russia’s use of this atrocity- and corruption-fuelled force abroad," Clooney said.

The actor stressed that Wagner's method can be seen most fully in the Central African Republic.

"Wagner has created a manual for how to hijack a government, using a brutally simple transaction: protecting the regime in exchange for mineral concessions. Wagner helped the country’s president, Faustin-Archange Touadéra, to recruit, train and equip a parallel army dedicated to protecting a pro-Russian regime, and it used mass violence to quell opposition and gain control of vast mining concessions," Clooney explained.

He stressed that the Wagner fighters "have a licence to loot", using terror to privatise and deplete the country's mineral wealth. George Clooney cites facts from an investigation by The Sentry, an organisation he co-founded. According to the organisation, Wagner's PMC strategy is to leave no trace by "killing eyewitnesses and murdering civilians including women and children”.

"Sentry investigators interviewed Central African Republic’s soldiers and militiamen in Wagner’s chain of command who said they were trained to torture—to cut off hands and legs, remove fingernails, strangle and burn people alive.This strategy—used in different forms in Libya, Mali, Sudan and elsewhere – serves Russia’s interests in several ways," Clooney said.

According to the star, "Wagner serves an overarching Russian strategic objective: subverting democracy in Africa".

"Whether or not its name is retained or changed, or it is merged with one or more Russian private military contractors or folded into state institutions, Wagner remains a cost-effective way for Russia to expand its influence. The group’s arrangements are too lucrative for Russia and its authoritarian allies to alter," the actor stressed.

He believes that now is the right time for the US and the international community to take action against the PMC and its initiator.

"America, the European Union and other allies should focus on holding Wagner financially and legally accountable," Clooney concluded, adding, that "the international community should also prioritise investigating and prosecuting those most responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity, whether they are Wagner personnel or regime leaders and local warlords allied with Wagner”.

• Wagner PMC emerged in 2014 and has been active in a number of countries where Russia has important interests, including Syria, Libya, the Central African Republic, and Ukraine. There, they committed, among other things, war crimes and crimes against humanity. After Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Wagner men took part in massacres of civilians. The PMC is currently recruiting convicts from Russian prisons. Prigozhin, the financier of the company, also recruits mercenaries for the war in Ukraine in Africa.

• In January 2023, Russia had legalized Wagner PMC, despite the ban on the activities of paramilitary mercenaries. The Wagner Center PMC Joint Stock Company is registered in the Russian register in the building of the business center of the same name, built by Yevgeny Prigozhin in St. Petersburg - until now, no legal entity with Wagner in its name has existed in Russia.

• US designates Wagner PMC transnational criminal organization

• Earlier it was reported that the European Parliament wanted to recognize Wagner's private military company as a terrorist organization.

• Britain is preparing to recognize Wagner Group as terrorist organization

• The Center for the Study of Corruption and Organized Crime (OCCRP) announced the founder of the PMC Wagner Yevgeny Prigozhin the "Person of the Year" in the nomination "organized crime and corruption".