Putin orders Wagner fighters to sign oath of allegiance to Russian state
President Putin last night ordered Wagner fighters to sign an oath of allegiance to the Russian state after a deadly plane crash killed Yevgeny Prigozhin, the volatile chief of the mercenary group.
Putin signed the decree bringing in the change with immediate effect yesterday after the Kremlin said that western suggestions that Prigozhin had been killed on its orders were an “absolute lie”. The Kremlin declined to definitively confirm his death, citing the need to wait for test results.
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, reports Reuters.
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.
Fighters must pledge “their loyalty to the Russian Federation... strictly follow their commanders and superiors’ orders, and conscientiously fulfill their obligations,” it reads, according to the Moscow Times.
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.