Vladimir Putin met a former senior commander of the Wagner Group on Thursday, two months after the death of their leader Yevgeny Prigozhin.
Prigozhin was killed after his private plane crashed landed in August, two months after his aborted coup attempt.
According to Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, Putin met with former Wagner commander Andrei Troshev to ask him to oversee volunteer fighter units in Ukraine.
Addressing Troshev, Putin said that they had spoken about how “volunteer units that can perform various combat tasks, above all, of course, in the zone of the special military operation.”
“You yourself have been fighting in such a unit for more than a year,” Putin said. “You know what it is, how it is done, you know about the issues that need to be resolved in advance so that the combat work goes in the best and most successful way.”
Following the death of Prigozhin, Putin ordered all Wagner troops to pledge allegiance to the Russian state.
Some of the Wagner fighters have signed up for service with the formal Russian army while many others have moved into different private military companies (PMCs), Russian sources told Reuters.
The Ministry of Defence said in its latest update that the redeployment of the personnel is unclear, but that “it is likely individuals have transferred to parts of the official Russian Ministry of Defence forces and other PMCs”.
Adding: “Several reports suggest a concentration of Wagner veterans around Bakhmut: their experience is likely to be particularly in demand in this sector.
“Many will be familiar with current front line and local Ukrainian tactics, having fought over the same terrain last winter.”
