Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday signed a decree requiring paramilitary fighters in “volunteer formations” to swear an oath of allegiance to the Russian flag.
The move immediately followed the suspicious reported death of Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin, whose mercenaries are commonly referred to as a “volunteer formation” in Russian state media because private military contractors are illegal.
This photograph taken on August 24, 2023, shows a flag bearing the logo of the private mercenary group Wagner as it flutters in the wind at a makeshift memorial in front of the PMC Wagner office in Novosibirsk, southern Russia. (VLADIMIR NIKOLAYEV/AFP via Getty Images)
Two days after Prigozhin allegedly died in a plane crash, Putin decreed that groups “contributing to the execution of tasks given to the armed forces” must swear an oath to Russia’s flag in order to strengthen “the spiritual and moral foundations for the defense of the Russian…
