Putin offers to let Wagner Group mercenaries to continue fighting in Ukraine — under one condition

July 14, 2023

Russian President Vladimir Putin says he offered to let Wagner Group mercenaries keep fighting in Ukraine — but only if they’d be led by a senior commander dubbed “Gray Hair” instead of their mutinous chief Yevgeny Prigozhin.

But according to Putin, Prigozhin swiftly dismissed the proposal, telling Putin during their post-uprising meeting June 29: “the boys won’t agree with such a decision.”

In a new interview with Russia’s top business newspaper Kommersant, Putin also bizarrely claimed the Wagner Group –which led the bloody fight to seize the key city of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine for 10 months –“doesn’t exist.”

Putin’s comments published Friday marked the first time he offered his account of what happened after the Wagner Group’s short-lived rebellion, which aimed at overthrowing Russia’s military leaders for their handling of the war in Ukraine.

pictured is Russian President Vladimir Putin on July 13, 2023. — Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke for the first time about his three-hour meeting with Wagner Group fighters after their mutiny last month.

pictured is Putin speaking to journalists on July 13, 2023 — Putin told state reporters he offered the mercenaries a chance to continue fighting in Ukraine on the condition that Yevgeny Prigozhin would be sidelined as their commander.

Five days after Prigozin agreed to stand down as part of a hastily negotiated peace agreement with the Russian government, the mercenary boss and 34 Wagner commanders were summoned to the Kremlin for a meeting with the president, who just days earlier called their mutiny an act of treason.

Putin told Kommersant’s senior Kremlin correspondent Andrei Kolesnikov that he praised the Wagner fighters’ actions in Ukraine, denounced their involvement in the uprising and offered them opportunities for future service – with the provision it wouldn’t involve Prigozhin.

One option would be that the mercenaries keep the same senior commander — who goes by the nickname “Sedoi,” or “Gray Hair” — and who has been the de facto leader of the private army in Ukraine for 16 months.

Wagner mercenary group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin is pictured — Putin claimed that Prigozhin vetoed the offer without consulting his subordinates, telling the president: “the boys won’t agree with such a decision.”

“Sedoi,” whose real name is Andrei Troshev, is a decorated veteran of Russia’s wars in Afghanistan and Chechnya, according to European Union sanctions documents, French official documents, sources with knowledge of the matter, and Russian media reports.

Troshev hails from Putin’s hometown of St Petersburg and has been pictured with the president.

“All of them could have gathered in one place and continued to serve, and nothing would have changed for them,” Putin told the paper. “They would have been led by the same person who had been their real commander all along.”

Putin said many Wagner troops in attendance nodded in agreement at his proposal, but Prigozhin, who was sitting in front and didn’t see their enthusiastic reaction, quickly vetoed the idea, responding: “The boys won’t agree with such a decision.”

Members of the Wagner Group military company guard are pictured in Rostov-on-Don, Russia on June 24, 2023 — The June 29 meeting attended by 35 Wagner commanders took place five days after Prigozhin’s short-lived uprising.

Putin didn’t say what proposal the mercenaries ultimately accepted, if any. However, on Monday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the Wagner troops pledged their loyalty to the president during the three-hour meeting and “said that they are ready to continue to fight for their homeland.”

When asked by Kommersant if Wagner would be preserved as a fighting unit, Putin inexplicably replied: “But Wagner does not exist. There is no law on private military organizations. It just doesn’t exist.”

The Kremlin later added further confusion by stating Friday there was no legal entity named Wagner and the legal status of such companies was a complicated one that needed consideration.

Mystery continues to surround Prigozhin’s fate in the wake of the botched uprising. Under the truce brokered by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, he was supposed to go into exile in Belarus along with his troops.

Yevgeny Prigozhin is pictured holding a Russian national flag in front of his soldiers in Bakhmut, Ukraine — The Kremlin said that Wagner fighters pledged loyalty to Putin during their meeting, but Prigozhin’s fate remains unknown.

But Lukashenko recently said Prigozhin had returned to Russia.

Belarusian state TV aired video Friday of Wagner instructors training Belarusian territorial defense forces at a firing range near Asipovichy, where a camp offered to Wagner is located. A Belarusian messaging app channel said Prigozhin spent a night at the camp earlier this week and posted a photo of him inside a tent.

The Belarusian Defense Ministry didn’t say how many Wagner troops were in Belarus.

Earlier, Russian news reports placed the 62-year-old Prigozhin in St. Petersburg, where he was allegedly spotted at the beginning of the month arriving at the FSB security service’s office to collect his previously confiscated arsenal of weapons.

President Biden on Thursday said the US was unsure where Prigozhin was, but joked the mercenary chief could be poisoned.

“If I were he, I’d be careful what I ate. I’d be keeping my eye on my menu,” Biden quipped darkly. “But all kidding aside…I don’t think any of us know for sure what the future of Prigozhin is in Russia.”

Retired Gen. Robert Abrams said earlier this week he believed Prigozhin was either dead or jailed.

“My personal assessment is that I doubt we’ll see Prigozhin ever again publicly,” Abrams told ABC News. “I think he’ll either be put in hiding, or sent to prison, or dealt with some other way, but I doubt we’ll ever see him again.”

With Post wires