Putin orders Wagner fighters to sign oath of allegiance after Prigozhin’s death
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Mr Vladimir Putin signed the decree bringing in the change with immediate effect on Friday.
PHOTO: EPA-EFE
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MOSCOW - President Vladimir Putin has ordered Wagner fighters to sign an oath of allegiance to the Russian state after a deadly plane crash believed to have killed Mr Yevgeny Prigozhin,
Mr Putin signed the decree bringing in the change with immediate effect on Friday, after the Kremlin said that Western suggestions that Mr Prigozhin had been killed on its orders were an “absolute lie”.
It has declined to definitively confirm his death, citing the need to wait for test results.
Russia’s aviation authority has said that Mr Prigozhin was on board a private jet which crashed on Wednesday evening north-west of Moscow with no survivors.
The incident took place exactly two months after he led a failed mutiny against army chiefs.
Mr Putin’s introduction of a mandatory oath for employees of Wagner and other private military contractors was a clear move to bring such groups under tighter state control.
The decree, published on the Kremlin website, obliges anyone carrying out work on behalf of the military or supporting what Moscow calls its “special military operation” in Ukraine to swear a formal oath of allegiance to Russia.
Described in the decree as a step to forge the spiritual and moral foundations of the defence of Russia, the wording of the oath includes a line in which those who take it promise to strictly follow the orders of commanders and senior leaders.
Russian investigators have opened a probe into what happened, but have not yet said what they suspect caused the plane to suddenly fall from the sky.
Nor have they officially confirmed the identities of the 10 bodies recovered from the wreckage.
Mr Nigel Gould-Davies, a former British ambassador to Belarus who is now a senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said the funeral would be significant.
“If Putin wishes to emphasise that Prigozhin died as a traitor, he will ignore it,” said Mr Gould-Davies.
“(While) Prigozhin’s supporters may use it as an opportunity to eulogise him and his critique of the Kremlin’s conduct of the war – and could strengthen the hostility of a core of Wagner loyalists towards the Kremlin.”
Russia’s Baza news outlet, which has good sources among law enforcement agencies, has reported that investigators are focusing on a theory that one or two bombs may have been planted on board the plane. REUTERS
