Lithuania's parliament voted unanimously on Tuesday to designate Russia's Wagner mercenary force "a terrorist organisation", accusing it of "systematic, serious crimes of aggression" in Ukraine.
The private military company fighting on the front lines in eastern Ukraine is a threat to public security, the resolution unanimously adopted by 117 members of parliament (MPs) in the Baltic EU and NATO country on Tuesday said.
The force is responsible, among other things, for killing and torturing civilians in Ukraine and bombing houses and other civilian targets, the motion said.
In the text, the Seimas People's Assembly in Vilnius also calls on other countries to follow Lithuania's example. The classification of the force, which is led by the pro-Kremlin oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin, is mainly symbolic.
Lithuania has previously described Russia's war in Ukraine as genocide and Russia as a "state that supports and perpetrates terrorism."
The resolution calls Wagner a "shadowy tool of Russian power" that receives military equipment from Moscow, uses Russian military infrastructure and is trained by military intelligence.
Mercenaries from the force have taken part in military operations since the beginning of Russia's attack on Ukraine and have committed "systematic, serious crimes of aggression" that amount to terrorism.
Previously, Wagner had helped Russia occupy and annex the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea in 2014 and participated in military operations in eastern Ukraine in 2015. The mercenary force was also involved in criminal acts in the Central African Republic, Sudan and Mali, the resolution added.
