The son of Yevgeny Prigozhin has taken over “command” of Russia’s Wagner group, a leading US think tank said, citing a prominent Wagner-affiliated Telegram channel. Pavel Prigozhin, 25, is negotiating with Rosgvardia, the Russian National Guard over Wagner rejoining Ukraine war, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) said.
The mercenary group’s main combat elements are split across several countries- Belarus, the Central African Republic, Libya, and Mali but there has been no clear unified leader since the death of Yevgeny Prigozhin who died in a plane crash in August.
This comes after some Wagner group elements reacted negatively to Vladimir Putin’s embrace of former Wagner Group commander and current Ministry of Defense (MoD) employee Andrey Troshev.
The ISW said that “some Wagner personnel are interested in rallying around a Prigozhin-linked alternative to the Kremlin- and MoD-aligned Troshev.”
Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of the Wagner mercenary group, led an unsuccessful coup against Russian president Vladimir Putin in June. His private military force Wagner fought alongside Russia’s regular army in Ukraine. After the short lived coup, the Kremlin said that he would be exiled to Belarus, and his fighters would either retire, follow him there, or join the Russian military.
Yevgeny Prigozhin died in a plane crash when he was on a flight from Moscow to St Petersburg. All 10 people on the plane, including three crew members, died in the crash, Russia’s emergency ministry said.
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