Fighters who had previously fought in Ukraine for the Russian mercenary group Wagner have returned to the battlefield in the east, according to the Ukrainian military.
Serhii Cherevatyi, the deputy commander of communications for Ukrainian troops in the east, said the Wagner fighters who had returned to Ukraine were now working for the Russian Ministry of Defense or its affiliated structures and had joined as individuals, not as a unit.
“As of now, there are several hundred of them in our direction, on the eastern front, in different areas,” Cherevatyi told CNN Wednesday.
But he sought to downplay the significance of their return, saying Russian forces in Ukraine “are short of everyone there now, so any man is good for them.”
Ukrainian soldiers taking part in the offensive near the beleaguered city of Bakhmut also told CNN that Wagner had returned to the area.
“Wagner is here too,” a drone operator with call sign Groove told CNN on the ground in eastern Ukraine on Tuesday.
“They came back, they swiftly changed their commanders and returned here,” he said.
Groove said that the group’s presence is in part intended to compensate for personnel shortages on the Russian side.
Mykhailo Podolyak, adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, said Wagner fighters had signed contracts with the Russian defense ministry “as an agreement to play the last chord, plugging the Russian hole in the Bakhmut direction for a short time.”
Podolyak, too, was keen not to inflate the return of the former mercenaries.
“Remember: the Wagner PMC no longer exists,” Podolyak wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, on Wednesday.
The Ukrainian general leading the southern counteroffensive, Oleksandr Tarnavsky, told CNN last week that Wagner fighters continue to pop up “here and there” on the front lines in the country.
“The fact is that their badges appear here and there; that’s been constant,” Tarnavsky said.
Remember: Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin was killed in a plane crash in August two months after he led a short-lived rebellion against the Kremlin. After the insurrection, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Wagner forces would have the opportunity to sign a contract with Russia’s Ministry of Defense, “other law enforcement agencies, or to return to your family and friends,” or go to Belarus.