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Rh network’s importance. Contributors pushed for the Government to invest in “network analysis tools and systems”, to better understand and respond to organisations like the Wagner Network.

44. Sanctions are one tool that the UK Government uses to respond to the Wagner Network, with 39 geographic and thematic regimes for making designations. Sanctions can include asset freezes (for individuals and entities), trust services sanctions (for individuals and entities) and travel bans (for individuals). The Minister told us in February that that UK sanctions against Wagner have “focused on high-impact targets and disrupting its overall network”; the Government is “considering further sanctions,” but makes it “a matter of policy not to speculate on whether or not we are considering specific cases.” There are now 150 staff members in the FCDO’s Sanctions Taskforce (“treble its previous number”), as well as many others in Government who work “substantially or partially on sanctions policy and implementation.”

45. According to the Dossier Center, identifying and sanctioning all Wagner-linked individuals and entities is “almost impossible”, due to the “efforts employed by [Prigozhin’s] staff to disguise their activities and companies”. The sanctions process is “comparatively slow” relative to the time needed to register a new company, and Prigozhin’s affiliates have “managed to evade sanctions through continuous turnover”. Wagner operatives have also changed their names to avoid sanctions, and there is evidence that officials of at least one host government have assisted Wagner-linked individuals to register companies in a way that obscures their true connection.

46. The Government told us at the end of February that it had sanctioned Yevgeny Prigozhin, as well as a further seven Wagner-linked individuals, including Dmitri Utkin, commanders in Syria and officials supporting Wagner recruitment in Russian prisons. To understand the level of sanctioning of Wagner actors, we compared and analysed the official sanctions lists of the United Kingdom, the United States and the European Union,