ROUND 2

Putin Signals New Plan to Throw Wagner Fighters Back Into Battle in Ukraine

Only this time, there’ll be no ambiguity about who’s really in command.

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday held a meeting with a top former commander of Wagner Group to discuss how to use “volunteer units” in Ukraine, with a separate intelligence report claiming that “hundreds” of the organization’s fighters had likely started to redeploy to the battlefield.

The Kremlin meeting on Thursday between Putin and Andrei Troshev—the Wagner commander known as “gray hair”—comes a month after the plane crash death of Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Wagner founder who led a failed mutiny against Russia’s military leadership in June. The meeting appeared to be an attempt to highlight that the Kremlin is now in control of the organization that once posed the most serious challenge to Putin’s authority.

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Russian Deputy Defense Minister Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, who has recently traveled to several countries where Wagner has operated, also attended the meeting, parts of which were shown on Russian state television. The broadcast seemingly indicated that the remnants of Wagner will be under the control of Yevkurov and Troshev—and more importantly, the Kremlin itself.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov confirmed to state news agency RIA Novosti that Troshev is now working in the Russian Defense Ministry. Following Wagner’s failed rebellion and Prigozhin’s death, Putin ordered the group’s mercenaries to sign an oath of allegiance to the Russian state—a move which many members of the group had rejected.

In comments broadcast on state television, Putin was seen telling Troshev that they had discussed how “volunteer units that can perform various combat tasks, above all, of course, in the zone of the special military operation,” referring to the war in Ukraine.

“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.”

Wagner’s status has been unclear since the abortive mutiny and Prigozhin's death, though many of its former members have since enlisted with Russia’s formal army while others have joined other private military companies, Russian sources told Reuters.

According to a corroborating British intelligence report Friday, many of the mercenaries may already be on their way back to Ukraine. “In recent weeks, up to hundreds of fighters formerly associated with the Wagner Group private military company (PMC) have likely started to redeploy to Ukraine as individuals and small groups, fighting for a variety of pro-Russian units,” the U.K.’s Ministry of Defence said.

The report added that Wagner had withdrawn from combat operations in Ukraine “by early June” before the mutiny and the death of Prigozhin and other Wagner leaders. British defense analysts said it was “likely” that many of the group’s mercenaries had now joined other PMCs or the formal Russian armed forces.

“Several reports suggest a concentration of Wagner veterans around Bakhmut: their experience is likely to be particularly in demand in this sector,” the intelligence report said, referring to the eastern Ukrainian city captured by Wagner after months of some of the bloodiest fighting seen since Putin’s invasion began last year. “Many will be familiar with current front line and local Ukrainian tactics, having fought over the same terrain last winter.”

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Dan Ladden-HallBreaking News Editor

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