Latest news on Russia’s war in Ukraine, Putin says Wagner ‘simply does not exist’
Russian President Vladimir Putin has proposed to Wagner fighters {that a} senior mercenary named Andrey Troshev now command the non-public navy group, in line with feedback the Russian chief made to the Kommersant newspaper that had been printed Friday.
Putin seems to have created a break up between senior fighters from the mercenary group and its chief Yevgeny Prigozhin — whose whereabouts are presently publicly unknown — at the least in phrases of the narrative rising from his feedback to Kommersant. The paper was reporting on a gathering held by the Russian president 5 days after Wagner’s short-lived riot collapsed on the finish of June – a gathering additionally attended by Prigozhin and a number of other dozen senior Wagner combatants.
Responding to a query from Kommersant, Putin said Wagner “does not exist” beneath Russian regulation, including that the Russian authorities wants to find out deal with the group legally.
According to the paper, Putin outlined quite a few choices for the way forward for Wagner mercenaries, together with persevering with to combat beneath their direct commander, a person going by the decision signal “Sedoy,” that means “Gray Hair.”
So who’s “Gray Hair”? Sedoy is the decision signal of Andrey Troshev, a retired Russian colonel and a founding member and government director of the Wagner Group, in line with sanctions paperwork printed by the European Union and France. He has additionally been sanctioned by Ukraine.
Troshev served because the group’s chief of workers for its earlier operations in Syria, in line with EU sanctions from December 2021.
“He was particularly involved in the area of Deir ez-Zor,” sanctions paperwork state, referring to an japanese metropolis the place Wagner fighters have had direct encounters with the US navy through the Syrian civil war. “As such, he provides a crucial contribution to (Syrian President) Bashar al-Assad’s war effort and therefore supports and benefits from the Syrian regime.”
United Kingdom sanctions from June 2022 additionally establish Troshev as a chief government with the non-public navy group who “has repressed the civilian population in Syria.”
Troshev is related to high Wagner Group leaders, together with founder Dmitriy Utkin, a former Russian GRU navy intelligence officer, in line with EU sanctions.
“Gray Hair” is a veteran of the wars in Chechnya and Afghanistan, for which he was awarded a number of medals, in line with Russian media.
Troshev was amongst these invited to a reception on the Kremlin in December 2016. {A photograph}, believed to be from that 2016 reception, emerged in Russian media and exhibits Putin alongside Troshev and Utkin, who’re each carrying a number of medals.
Troshev was born in April 1953 in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) in the previous Soviet Union, in line with sanctions paperwork.
CNN’s Andrew Carey and Josh Pennington contributed reporting to this submit.
