The Wagner Group, whose leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin, died under strange circumstances in August, has once again recruited mercenaries in the Ural region and Siberia to fight alongside the Russian Army, the Russian press reported this Wednesday (1st).
“We are selecting men who have combat experience, including those who were part of private military companies,” a representative of the mercenary group told the portal. 59.ruin the city of Perm in the Urals.
Unlike what happened in Prigozhin’s time, however, now the company does not recruit ex-convicts.
The six-month contract stipulates a salary of between 80,000 rubles (around R$4,330) and 240,000 rubles (around R$13,000), depending on the location.
“We need desperate and courageous people, the best of the best,” says the group’s Telegram channel.
The candidate must have a Russian passport, not suffer from asthma, diabetes or oncological diseases, and not have a criminal record linked to the use of psychotropic substances.
The company confirmed that Wagner is now headed by Pavel Prigozhin, the only son of the group’s founder, who died when his plane crashed in August.
The resumption of recruitment was also reported by the portal ngs.rufrom the Siberian city of Novosibirsk.
“We have already been signing contracts for two or three days. We have not signed them with the Ministry of Defense, but with the National Guard. For now, we are not taking prisoners and sick people,” said the source.
On Sunday (29), Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov officially welcomed more than 170 former members of the Wagner Group into the special forces of the Caucasus republic.
Kadyrov, who has had his ups and downs with Prigozhin over his criticism of Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu, said the group’s former members have already signed contracts with the Defense Ministry.
Russian media reported last week about the return to the battlefield of feared mercenaries in the ranks of the Arbat special battalion, which is taking part in the battle for Avdivka in Ukraine’s Donetsk region.
The mercenaries left Ukraine after capturing Bakhmut’s stronghold in May following Prigozhin’s failed armed rebellion against the Kremlin in June.
In early October, Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed that the private plane in which Prigozhin and his close aides crashed in August was not shot down and suggested that they themselves were responsible for the tragedy.
Putin, who was accused by Wagner members, the opposition and Western politicians of being responsible for the accident, lamented that experts did not carry out medical tests to detect the presence of alcohol and drugs “in the blood of the deceased”.
He later met in the Kremlin with a former Wagner Group commander, Andrei Troshev, with whom he discussed the creation of “volunteer units” in the Ministry of Defense.
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