Treat Russia as a Terrorist State for Sponsoring Wagner Group

The United States spent more than two decades battling al-Qaeda, ISIS, Boko Haram, and other terrorist organizations that aspired to statehood. In Russia, it confronts a collapsing state whose degeneracy increasingly resembles that of a terrorist organization.

Indiscriminate missile and artillery strikes, massacres, torture, and rape are designed to traumatize Ukraine’s civilian population and exhaust its will to resist Moscow’s revanchist aggression. Similarly brutal tactics have been employed across Africa and the Middle East by the Wagner Group, the Kremlin proxy force masquerading as a private military company. Calls are understandably growing for Western allies to formally recognize Russian atrocities as terrorist acts, and to respond to them more robustly.

NS

About the Author

Nate Sibley

Nate Sibley is head of the Kleptocracy Initiative at Hudson Institute.

The United States spent more than two decades battling al-Qaeda, ISIS, Boko Haram, and other terrorist organizations that aspired to statehood. In Russia, it confronts a collapsing state whose degeneracy increasingly resembles that of a terrorist organization.

Indiscriminate missile and artillery strikes, massacres, torture, and rape are designed to traumatize Ukraine’s civilian population and exhaust its will to resist Moscow’s revanchist aggression. Similarly brutal tactics have been employed across Africa and the Middle East by the Wagner Group, the Kremlin proxy force masquerading as a private military company. Calls are understandably growing for Western allies to formally recognize Russian atrocities as terrorist acts, and to respond to them more robustly.