Putin brings a new Wagner leader into play, but Prigozhin fights back

After the revolt in June, the Wagner army had to hand over a large part of the weapons, ammunition and military technology to the Moscow Ministry of Defense. Putin had promised the insurgents impunity and offered them contracts with the ministry. However, the majority is reportedly behind Prigozhin, who has gone into hiding. Officially, according to Prigozchin, the Wagner army has a break until the beginning of August.

According to his own statements, after their revolt against the military leadership, the Wagner mercenaries offered the Wagner mercenaries the opportunity to continue fighting in Ukraine under their own command. “Many nodded when I said that,” Putin described in the daily newspaper Kommersant of a meeting in the Kremlin with the private army. The fighters could serve under the command of a senior Wagner commander, known as “Sedoi”.

“Nothing would have changed for them. They would have been led by the same person who had been their actual commander the whole time,” Putin is quoted as saying. “Sedoi” is said to be the war veteran Andrei Troschev, who, like Putin, is comes from St. Petersburg. But it was also Prigozhin who rejected the offer. Even his “boys” would not agree with such a decision, the Wagner-Bos would have claimed.