The paperwork, obtained by the Russian Investigative Dossier Center, confirmed that Surovikin had been assigned a private VIP Wagner registration quantity in 2018.
The identities of these officers haven’t been revealed.
There is not any proof that Surovikin was on Wagner’s payroll however the VIP membership for thus many senior figures implies an excessively shut relationship between the Russian army and the mercenary group.
Wagner has not answered CNN’s request for a response.
This suspicion of divided loyalty between Wagner and the Russian army, which might have performed a job in permitting the group’s fighters to take a key base within the southern metropolis of Rostov-on-Don with little resistance, might gas a purge of prime army leaders.
Surovikin has not been seen in public since final Saturday (native time), when he launched a video wherein he held a machine gun and nervously pleaded for Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin to cease his revolt.
His whereabouts are unknown since then.
Surovkin referred to as on Prigozhin to cease the revolt quickly after it started however he seemed to be stammering as if studying from a script, prompting hypothesis about his mind-set.
Prigozhin was final noticed leaving Rostov-on-Don on Saturday, after abruptly calling off his troops’ march on Moscow.
He launched an audio message on Monday, explaining his resolution to show his troops again.
After a weekend of chaos, Putin tried to reassert his authority in a show of unity, making uncommon public appearances and telling his troops they “stopped a civil war” by refusing to affix with Wagner fighters.
Major flooding from Ukraine dam breach captured by satellites
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov rejected recommendations that Wagner’s failed mutiny jeopardised Putin’s grip on energy, saying Prigozhin’s abrupt withdrawal demonstrated “the level of unity within society around the president.”
But there at the moment are questions in Russia over whether or not the Kremlin trusts him nonetheless.
Source: www.9news.com.au
