Russian President Vladimir Putin met with former Wagner paramilitary group commander Andrey Troshev and asked him to form voluntary military units for Moscow’s “special military operation” in Ukraine, the Kremlin informed on Friday.
Deputy Defence Minister Yunus-Bek Yevkurov also took part in the meeting held in the Kremlin on Thursday.
You yourself have been fighting in such a unit for more than a year. 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.
Troshev is a retired colonel and former Chief of Staff of the Wagner Group. He did not support Yevgeny Prigozhin’s short-lived armed uprising against Moscow in June.
According to presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov, Troshev is now working with the Defence Ministry.
After Prigozhin’s failed attempt, Putin held a three-hour meeting with 35 Wagner commanders on 29 June, offering them continued military service under Troshev, but Prigozhin refused.
On 23 August, a private plane flying from Moscow to St. Petersburg crashed in Russia’s Tver region. As a result, all those on board, including Prigozhin and Wagner Military Commander Dmitry Utkin, died.
