UK law firm to sue Wagner PMC and founder Evgeny Prigozhin on behalf of Ukraine

The UK law firm McCue Jury & Partners announced Wednesday that it will file a lawsuit against Russian businessman Evgeny Prigozhin and the Wagner private military company (PMC), which he founded, on behalf of Ukrainians.

“Wagner’s use of terrorism to achieve Putin’s goals is borne out through their war crimes, including the use of torture, murder, and rape as weapons of war to terrorise civilian populations into submission. [...] Not only is Putin’s war in Ukraine an inherently illegal one, but it is also illegal in the way it is being waged—purposely inflicting significant loss and damage on Ukrainian civilians,” the firm said in a press release.

According to the statement, the lawyers intend to pay for the case through crowdfunding. If enough money is raised, they said, the suit could “turn into a billion-pound reparations claim once the full mass of potential claimants are joined,” and could expand to “include the likes of Putin himself, as well as his kleptocratic cronies who have supported his illegal war.”

Yevgeny Prigozhin, the owner of the Concord catering company and the founder of the Wagner PMC, has been under U.S. sanctions since 2016 and EU sanctions since 2020. The businessman denied having any connection to the mercenary group until September 2022, when he said publicly that he founded Wagner on May 1, 2014, to “protest Russians” in the Donbas.

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