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Vladimir Putin has appointed a former senior Wagner commander to lead Russian militia operations in Ukraine, a first indication of how the Kremlin seeks to repurpose the notorious paramilitary group a month after its founder died in a plane crash.
The Russian president convened Andrei Troshev to a meeting, telling him that he would lead “volunteer units that can fulfil various combat tasks” in Ukraine and elsewhere, according to a transcript published by the Kremlin on Friday.
Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s spokesman, told reporters the meeting was “routine” and that Troshev “works for the defence ministry,” without elaborating further.
Troshev, best known by his call sign “Grey-Hair”, was one of Wagner’s senior commanders for nearly a decade. He apparently fell out with the militia’s founder, Yevgeny Prigozhin, around the time of the warlord’s aborted mutiny and march on Moscow in June.
Russia’s military has since moved to take over Wagner’s operations in Ukraine, as well as its mercenary activities abroad in countries like Libya, Mali, and the Central African Republic.
Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, a deputy defence minister who attended the late-night meeting with Putin in the Kremlin on Thursday, has made rare visits to several of Russia’s African client states in the wake of the coup and told leaders the military would replace Wagner.
Prigozhin’s “march of justice” in June was the culmination of a years-long feud with defence minister Sergei Shoigu over power and resources that intensified amid the struggles of Russia’s army to achieve a decisive breakthrough in Ukraine.
Wagner seized a military headquarters in Rostov, a major southern city, apparently took Yevkurov and a senior military intelligence leader hostage, and killed at least 13 Russian servicemen before aborting their advance just 200km outside of Moscow.
Putin later said he met Prigozhin and several dozen Wagner men in the Kremlin, where he offered them the chance to continue fighting in Ukraine under Troshev’s command. Prigozhin declined the offer on their behalf, Putin said, claiming that many of the men would have otherwise agreed.
Instead, Prigozhin, a former Kremlin caterer known as “Putin’s chef,” agreed to relocate to Belarus before what he said would be their eventual deployment to Africa, where Wagner also controls lucrative mining operations.
In the week before his plane crash, Prigozhin made a tour of Wagner’s African countries in an apparent attempt to forestall the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence agency, from supplanting the group.
His death alongside Wagner’s other top two leaders has left the future of what remains of the group unclear.
A Wagner-affiliated channel on social media app Telegram published an anonymous statement saying the group was “continuing its work” in Africa and Belarus. “There is no question of the company closing. The PMC’s leadership is still solving all the tasks before it and leading the company,” it said, without elaborating further.