Russian President Vladimir Putin has introduced an oath of loyalty for volunteer fighters from the Wagner Group after the death of their boss Yevgeny Prigozhin.
Putin's introduction of a mandatory oath for employees of Wagner and other private military contractors was a clear move to bring such groups under tighter state control.
The decree, published on the Kremlin website, obliges anyone carrying out work on behalf of the military or supporting what Moscow calls its "special military operation" in Ukraine to swear a formal oath of allegiance to Russia. Described in the decree as a step to forge the spiritual and moral foundations of the defence of Russia, the wording of the oath includes a line in which those who take it promise to strictly follow the orders of commanders and senior leaders.
Members of the Wagner Group military company guard an area as others load their tank onto a truck on a street in Rostov-on-Don, Russia prior to leaving an area at the headquarters of the Southern Military District.
"All of this is an absolute lie, and here, when covering this issue, it is necessary to base yourself on facts."They need to be established in the course of investigative actions," Peskov said.Russian investigators have opened a probe into what happened, but have not yet said what they suspect caused the plane to suddenly fall from the sky.
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