Russia has placed former British defence minister Ben Wallace on its wanted list in connection with an unspecified criminal investigation, state news agency TASS said on Friday, citing an unnamed law enforcement source. The source said the case was linked to terrorism-related charges.
Wallace, who led the UK Defence Ministry from 2019 until August 2023, has been one of London’s most vocal backers of Kyiv since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The move puts a former senior British cabinet minister on a list Moscow has increasingly used against foreign figures it accuses of hostile acts.
The decision also follows months of public hostility from Moscow. In October last year, a regional Russian lawmaker called for Wallace to be added to Russia’s wanted list after he urged Ukraine to strike the bridge linking southern Russia to Crimea. Speaking at the Warsaw Security Forum the previous month, Wallace said Ukraine should be helped to build long-range capabilities to make Crimea unviable and to “choke the life out of Crimea.” He added: “We need to smash the cursed bridge.”
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov described those remarks as “stupid.”
Crimea has been at the centre of the war since Russia annexed the peninsula from Ukraine in 2014, and the bridge Wallace referred to is a key symbol of Moscow’s hold over the territory. The warrant-style move against Wallace also fits a broader pattern in Russia, where authorities have turned legal measures into a tool of pressure against critics at home and abroad.
In 2024, President Vladimir Putin signed a law allowing authorities to confiscate the assets of people convicted of spreading deliberately false information about the military, as well as offences including justifying terrorism and spreading fake news about the army. Last year, Russia’s Federal Security Service opened a criminal case against exiled oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, and in 2023 Moscow issued an arrest warrant for International Criminal Court prosecutor Karim Khan after he sought Putin’s arrest on war crimes charges.
It is not clear how many foreign officials or public figures appear on the Russian Interior Ministry’s database of wanted persons, but independent outlet Mediazona has reported that the list includes dozens of European politicians and officials. Wallace has continued to press for stronger military support for Kyiv and to condemn Russian aggression, making him an obvious target for Moscow’s widening campaign of intimidation even if the practical effect of the wanted listing remains unclear.
For Wallace, the action is less about a courtroom case in Russia than about the message it sends: that Moscow is willing to turn its legal system outward against one of Britain’s most prominent former defence chiefs as the war grinds on.
