Putin meets former Wagner commander Andrei Troshev

The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, met Andrei Troshev, formerly a top Wagner mercenary commander, to discuss how voluntary fighting units are used in the Ukraine war, the Kremlin said on Friday, Reuters reports.

The meeting underscored the Kremlin’s attempt to show that the state had now gained control over the mercenary group after a failed June mutiny by the Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin, who was killed in a plane crash in August.

The Kremlin said Putin had met with Troshev, who is known by his nom de guerre “Sedoi” – or “grey hair”, and the deputy defence minister Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, who sat closest to Putin, on Thursday night.

Addressing Troshev, Putin said that they had spoken about how “volunteer units that can perform various combat tasks, above all, of course, in the zone of a special military operation”.

“You yourself have been fighting in such a unit for more than a year,” Putin said. “You know what it is, how it is done, you know about the issues that need to be resolved in advance so that the combat work goes in the best and most successful way.”

Putin also said he wanted to speak about social support for those involved in the fighting.