As many as 3,000 Wagner fighters joined the Akhmat special forces of the 2nd Army Corps of the Russian Armed Forces. Their commander Ratibor gathers people who will carry out the "tasks of the state.”
The head of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, reported on Telegram that one of the commanders of the Wagner Group with call sign Ratibor would join the Akhmat special forces and bring in 3,000 fighters along with him too.
The agreement was reached as a result of negotiations between the deputy commander of the 2nd Army Corps of the Russian Armed Forces, Apta Alaudinov, and Wagner commander, Alexander Kuznetsov (Ratibor). The Russian Defence Ministry approved the initiative. Kadyrov spoke of Ratibor as "an old comrade with whom he had fought side by side before.”
The Chechen commander confirmed that the Russian Defence Ministry allocated vacancies at Akhmat to the Wagner regiment. According to Alaudinov, Akhmat already has two battalions of fighters from the former PMC Wagner.
Ratibor noted that there was no bias towards fighters at Akhmat, either by ethnicity or by any other criterion. He considers this group the most optimal for service — "where we can come with our personnel to prove our effectiveness to carry out the tasks of the state."
In a separate statement published on other channels, Ratibor said that "the entire kitchen” in his regiment would be like at Wagner, without papers, and "we invite all our people who want to join.”
A friend of his, a Wagnerian commander with call sign The Thirteenth, characterised Ratibor as follows:
"Ratibor is a Hero of Russia, with whom I went on attacks. He once went with me and stormtroopers in Syria with a machine gun! The second Palmyra was captured under his leadership.”
All Wagner fighters enjoy respect and special hospitality in Chechnya, The Thirteenth said.
Alaudinov reposted Nikolai Dolgachev's opinion, a military correspondent for VGTRK, who noted that many of Wagner fighters had already returned to the front.
According to Dolgachev, it is important to overcome the so-called "one trench syndrome”, when everyone praises only their own unit and is not very happy with how others work on flanks.
Former Wagner fighters are now fighting in the Russian Guard and the Ministry of Defence as part of separate units.
Wagner fighter Condottiero wrote on Telegram that "Ratibor will gather more people if needed:
"It will be needed a lot soon, and he's not the only one who will gather people.”
One shall assume that large-scale assault operations at the front are coming soon, and three thousand highly skilled fighters will come in handy.
Akhmat is stationed in the Kramatorsk and Seversk directions as part of the 2nd Army Corps, Ukrainian sources say.
PMC Wagner had 50,000 fighters during the fighting for Bakhmut. PMC Wagner founder Yevgeny Prigozhin then said that his units lost about 20,000 people in battles for the city, half of them were prisoners.
On the evening of June 23, Prigozhin announced on his Telegram channel that his units had been attacked. He blamed the Russian military leadership for the raid and sent his units in a column to Moscow. On the morning of June 24, Russian President Vladimir Putin, in a televised address, called these actions an armed rebellion and an act of betrayal. The FSB opened a criminal case against Prigozhin. Prigozhin stopped the march near Serpukhov and returned the fighters to field camps.
On June 27, the case against Prigozhin was dropped out of respect for his military merits. Some of the Wagner fighters went to Belarus and then to Africa. Prigozhin himself was killed in a plane crash on August 23.