Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday signed a decree requiring paramilitary fighters in “volunteer formations” to swear an oath of allegiance to the Russian flag.
The move immediately followed the suspicious reported death of Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin, whose mercenaries are commonly referred to as a “volunteer formation” in Russian state media because private military contractors are illegal.
This photograph taken on August 24, 2023, shows a flag bearing the logo of the private mercenary group Wagner as it flutters in the wind at a makeshift memorial in front of the PMC Wagner office in Novosibirsk, southern Russia. (VLADIMIR NIKOLAYEV/AFP via Getty Images)
Two days after Prigozhin allegedly died in a plane crash, Putin decreed that groups “contributing to the execution of tasks given to the armed forces” must swear an oath to Russia’s flag in order to strengthen “the spiritual and moral foundations for the defense of the Russian Federation.”
The decree said all paramilitary forces must “pledge their loyalty to the Russian Federation,” swear to “strictly follow their commanders and superiors’ orders,” and “conscientiously fulfill their obligations.”
Mercenary groups like Wagner are technically illegal under Russian law, but Putin uses them as deniable black ops forces for the dirtiest operations, such as the illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014. Wagner Group mercenaries have been among the most brutally effective forces in Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
Wagner forces have also been instrumental in Russia’s growing influence over Africa, a project Prigozhin seemed to be enthusiastically working on — and profiting handsomely from — at the time of his reported death.
Yevgeny Prigozhin (Press Service at Concord)
In July, Putin began pushing the Russian parliament to legalize private military companies, singling out Wagner’s troops to praise them for “fighting with dignity.” Putin waved aside the mutiny by Prigozhin and his fighters in June by suggesting that a few of the lower-ranking mercenary soldiers had been led astray.
U.S. officials said on Friday that Prigozhin’s plane was most likely brought down by a bomb, but not a surface-to-air missile, as some early rumors suggested. Wagner co-founder Dmitry Utkin and several top leaders in the organization were also on the flight manifest, which suggests they also died.
People carry a body bag away from the wreckage of a crashed private jet near the village of Kuzhenkino, Tver region, Russia, on August 24, 2023. (AP Photo)
The Kremlin vehemently denied allegations that Prigozhin was killed on Putin’s orders.
“There has been a lot of speculation around this crash, the tragic deaths of the plane’s passengers, among them Yevgeny Prigozhin. Of course, the West presents all this speculation from a particular angle. All of that is sheer lies,” snarled Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov.