The Latest Breaking News from Yevgeny Prigozhin

The head of the Russian private military contractor Wagner published on Saturday a short letter to the White House asking what crime his company was accused of, after Washington announced new sanctions on the group.

North Korea has repeatedly denied assisting Russia

The U.S. Treasury Department will impose additional sanctions on the Russian private military company, the Wagner Group, that has been aiding Russia's military in its ongoing invasion of Ukraine.

The Wagner Group has an estimated 50,000 fighters in Ukraine, 80 percent of them drawn from Russian prisons.

It comes in part in response to North Korean weapon shipments to the mercenary group, the White House said.

Russia's Wagner paramilitary group on Friday denied it was recruiting Serbs to fight in Ukraine, a day after activists filed criminal complaints against the organisation in Belgrade.

The US government has designated the Russian private military contractor known as the Wagner Group as a “transnational criminal organization,” giving the notorious mercenary outfit the same status as international drug cartels and human trafficking organisations under US law.

The United States will impose additional sanctions next week against Russian private military company the Wagner Group, which U.S. officials say has been helping Russia's military in the Ukraine war, the White House said on Friday.

A senior Russian politician on Friday published a picture of himself clutching a sledgehammer given to him by the Wagner mercenary group, a tool it has adopted as a symbol of vengeance since one was used to murder a Wagner defector last year.

Al Jazeera charts six months of assaults on Bakhmut as fighting against Russian forces intensifies.

Military sources say the group is vying with the Russian regular army for supremacy in Putin’s chain of command