MOSCOW, Russia
Russian President, Vladimir
Putin has tasked a former aide of late Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin to
oversee volunteer fighter units in Ukraine, according to a Kremlin statement on
Friday.Vladimir Putin meets with Yunus-Bek Yevkurov and Andrei Troshev.
"At the last meeting, we
talked about you overseeing the formation of volunteer units that can carry out
various tasks, first and foremost, of course, in the zone of the special
military operation," Putin was quoted as saying to Wagner commander Andrei
Troshev, who is known by his nom de guerre "Sedoi"
("Gray-haired").
The meeting, also attended by
Deputy Defense Minister Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, underlined the integration of
fighters from the mercenary group into Russia's regular military in the wake of
Prigozhin's aborted mutiny in June.
Troshev, a retired colonel,
comes from Putin's hometown of St. Petersburg and is a decorated veteran of
Kremlin military campaigns in Afghanistan, Chechnya and Syria.
He was one of the leaders of
the Wagner Group in Syria, for which the EU put him on its sanctions list in
December 2021.
Prigozhin, the head of the
Wagner mercenary group, died with nine other people when a plane flying from
Moscow to Saint Petersburg crashed on Aug. 23.
Exactly two months earlier,
Prigozhin had openly challenged Russia's military high command by leading a
short-lived mutiny with his fighters that threatened to spiral into civil
conflict.
Prigozhin called off the
rebellion after apparently striking a deal with the Kremlin through the
mediation of Belarus but he faced no criminal prosecution.
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