Today is the first anniversary of the death of several key Wagner Group leaders, including its owner Yevgeny Prigozhin and founder Dmitry “Wagner” Utkin, who were killed in a plane crash almost certainly due to an explosion on board. Since then, the Wagner Group has become increasingly fragmented, with many surviving senior figures leaving the group, the UK Defense Intelligence reports.
Andrei “Sedoi” Troshev, the Wagner Group’s former chief executive, joined the Ministry of Defence of russia, likely as part of the MOD’s Redut private military company (PMC), tasked with forming Volunteer Corps units to fight in Ukraine. Alexandr “Ratibor” Kuznetsov, former commander of the Wagner Group’s 1st Assault Detachment joined the Akhmat Chechen Special Forces volunteer unit. Boris “Zomb” Nizhevenok, former commander of the Wagner Group’s 3rd Assault Detachment, assumed leadership of the Vostok-V volunteer unit in May 2024.
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Numerous veteran Wagner Group personnel have followed these and other former Wagner Group leaders in transferring from the group. In comparison to its peak personnel count of around 50,000 in 2023, the company now highly likely maintains around 5,000 total personnel across its residual deployments in Belarus and Africa.
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