The Wagner Group, a private Russian mercenary company, has sent an open letter to the White House after it is subject to US sanctions for receiving weapons from North Korea.



Media such as Reuters reported that Yevgeny Prigozin, the head of the Wagner Group, called 'Putin's Chef', inquired in a message posted on Telegram on the 21st local time, "Could you please clarify what the crime Wagner is alleged to have committed?" .



It is a response to John Kirby, the White House National Security Council's Strategic Communications Coordinator, who announced additional sanctions after designating the Wagner group as an international criminal organization while releasing satellite images containing evidence that North Korea supplied weapons to Wagner.



Kirby's coordinator also criticized the Wagner Group as "a criminal organization that is committing a wide range of atrocities and human rights violations."



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▲ Yevgeny Prigogine, head of Wagner, ‘Putin’s Chef’


The White House said last month that North Korea sold weapons and ammunition, including infantry rockets and missiles, to the Wagner Group in violation of UN Security Council resolutions.



North Korea is responding to the related report as a "absurd slander" and denying it completely.



The United States has already imposed sanctions on trade related to the Wagner Group in order to prevent them from securing weapons in 2017 and last December.



Prigozhin, a Putin aide, was also wanted for meddling in the US presidential election.



The European Union has also imposed its own sanctions on the Wagner Group, which has been active in Ukraine and several African countries in 2021.



Russian media RIA FAN reported that the Wagner group plans to return the bodies of Ukrainian soldiers killed in Soledar on the eastern front in Ukraine to their homeland.



The media explained that Prigozhin said, "We must return the bodies of the Ukrainian soldiers in a dignified way," and that "the bodies of about 20 trucks will be returned over the next 4 to 5 times."



Soledar is a salt mining town about 10km away from Bakhmut, where Ukraine and Russia have been fighting fiercely for the past few months.



On the 10th, Prigozhin declared that he had “taken control of all of Soledar,” and on the 19th, the Ukrainian military also admitted a “tactical retreat” in the area.



(Photo = AP,