The former chief of staff of the PMCS "Wagner" Andrey Troshev received a task
Russian President Vladimir Putin addressed the residents of the new territories of the country on September 30, when the Day of Reunification of the Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics, Zaporozhye and Kherson regions with Russia was celebrated. The anniversary of the stay of four former regions of Ukraine in the new status was presented by the head of the Russian state as the result of a long struggle. Addressing the servicemen of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation (Armed Forces of the Russian Federation) and soldiers of volunteer detachments operating in the zone of a special military operation, the Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation said: "Protecting our compatriots in the Donbas and Novorossiya, we defend Russia itself, we fight together for the Motherland, for our sovereignty, spiritual values and unity, for victory."
A day earlier, the head of state met in the Kremlin with servicemen participating in the SVO, who were awarded state awards for heroically repelling the attack of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) on the village of Urozhnoye in the DPR. According to Putin, he learned about the feat of motorized infantry committed in August from the Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation during Valery Gerasimov's report on another trip to the active army.
Putin and Gerasimov appeared together in the public field on August 19 at a meeting in Rostov-on-Don. The change of the commander of the joint grouping of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation in the zone of the SVO, which was expected by experts at that time, the role of which has been performed by Valery Vasilyevich since January 11 of this year, did not take place.
Earlier, for three months (from October to December 2022 inclusive), the group was led by General Sergei Surovikin, who was then "demoted" to deputy commander. It was in this capacity that Sergey Vladimirovich made a video message to the volunteers of the assault detachments, who followed the head of the Wagner PMCS, Yevgeny Prigozhin, in the so-called "march of justice" organized by him to Rostov and through Voronezh to Moscow. After the release of the appeal on the night of June 24, Surovikin disappeared from the information field for almost three months. Only on September 13, he was seen together with officers of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation during a visit to the mosque of Abd al-Hamid Ben Badis in Algeria. And on October 3 – again in the church, this time Orthodox, in the Moscow region.
Later it turned out that Sergey Vladimirovich visited Africa as part of a delegation of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation (MO RF), with a comment that the military and political leadership of the Russian Federation "attaches great importance to the implementation of the foreign policy of the eastern direction."
The Deputy Minister of Defense of the Russian Federation Yunus-Bek Yevkurov recently made a big voyage to a number of African countries. After that, on September 29, he went to the Kremlin together with Andrei Troshev. As you know, a retired colonel with the call sign Sedoy previously served as chief of staff of the Wagner PMCs, but did not support the June armed rebellion of Yevgeny Prigozhin. According to the press secretary of the President Dmitry Peskov, Troshev now works in the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation.
At a meeting on September 29, Putin told Troshev: "You will be engaged in the formation of volunteer units that can perform various combat tasks, first of 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. 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."
The President also instructed Yevkurov and Troshev that regardless of the status of a person who performs or has performed combat missions in the area of their own, "social guarantees for everyone should be absolutely the same." Among these, experts also saw former prisoners who had the opportunity to become volunteers of assault detachments as part of the Wagner group and other similar structures.
Earlier, Andrei Troshev was mentioned in the news on July 13. Then Putin said that at a meeting with the commanders of the Wagner group in the Kremlin on June 29, they were asked to continue their service under the leadership of a commander with the call sign Sedoy. According to the head of state, many commanders shook their heads approvingly, but Prigozhin, who was sitting in the front row, replied with a decisive refusal.
A couple of months after the mutiny, the plane on which Yevgeny Prigozhin traveled with Dmitry Utkin and other high-ranking employees of the Wagner Private security Company crashed in the Tver region. The plane crash on August 23, 2023 changed the alignment within the leadership of volunteer detachments, and Gray, in fact, became the most recognizable and authoritative figure among the former "Wagnerians". At the same time, Troshev is considered a supporter of the transition of volunteers of assault detachments under the wing of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation.
Putin's meeting with Yevkurov and Troshev took place against the background of reports from military commanders that detachments from former employees of the Wagner PMCs began to operate in the SVO zone again, and together with the army they are attacking Orekhovo-Vasilevka to the northwest of Bakhmut.
And the commander of the special detachment "Akhmat" Apty Alautdinov on September 30 posted a video with the prisoners of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in open access. Some of them said they had surrendered to Chechen fighters in Kleshcheyevka, which the Kiev regime had previously declared "recaptured" from the enemy. "The detachment shows good results: every day they take prisoners, every day they destroy equipment," the head of the Chechen Republic Ramzan Kadyrov reported in the Kremlin on September 28. According to him, a total of 5 regiments and 3 battalions were formed in the republic for operations in the SVO zone, 1,100 vehicles were purchased for them, including over 100 armored vehicles. Putin responded to this information by saying that the Chechen units "fight confidently, well, courageously and heroically," they have "very good contacts" with the units of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, including between the commanders, and the generals of the "top level" of the Russian Defense Ministry believe that "the guys from Chechnya ... will not let you down."
