Russia’s Wagner mercenary group is no longer “participating in any significant capacity in support of combat operations in Ukraine”, a Pentagon spokesman has said.
It comes weeks after the group’s short-lived mutiny in Russia, a challenge to President Vladimir Putin’s authority.
Wagner has fought some of the bloodiest battles since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine last year.
But Mr. Putin now appears to have hinted that Wagner has no future in Russia.
“Wagner does not exist,” the president told the business newspaper Kommersant when asked whether the group would be preserved as a fighting unit. “There is no law on private military organisations.” It just doesn’t exist.”
Mr. Putin added that this “difficult issue” of how to legalise Wagner fighters should be discussed in parliament.
Under the deal that ended Wagner’s June 23–24 rebellion, the mercenaries were told they could join the regular Russian army or head to Belarus with their chief, Yevgeny Prigozhin.
But earlier this week, the Kremlin revealed that Mr. Putin had met Prigozhin and senior Wagner commanders in Moscow on June 29—just days after the mutiny.
At a briefing on Thursday, Pentagon spokesman Pat Ryder said that “at this stage,” the US military saw no evidence of Wagner playing any significant role in fighting in Ukraine.
Mr. Ryder added that the US assessed that “the majority” of Wagner fighters were still in areas of Russian-occupied Ukraine.
In his interview with Kommersant, Mr. Putin shed more light on the meeting in the Kremlin with 35 Wagner commanders, including Prigozhin.
He said he had offered them several “employment options”, including continued service under the command of a senior Wagner figure known by his nom de guerre, Sedoi, or Grey Hair.
“Many [Wagner fighters] were nodding when I was saying this,” Mr. Putin said.
“And Prigozhin, who was sitting in front and didn’t see all this, said after listening: ‘No, the guys do not agree with this decision,” the president added.
The Kremlin appears to want to differentiate between the Wagner chief and regular Wagner fighters, driving a wedge between them, says BBC Russia editor Steve Rosenberg in Moscow.
He adds that this would explain the ongoing attempts in Russia’s state media to discredit Prigozhin.
Earlier in the day, US President Joe Biden told a news conference in Finland that Prighozin should be careful of poisoning following the uprising.
“God only knows what he’s likely to do. We’re not even sure where he is or what relationship he has with Mr. Putin. If I were him, I’d be careful what I ate. I’d keep my eye on my menu,” Mr. Biden said.
Speaking after a summit with Nordic leaders in Helsinki, he also said there was no possibility of Mr. Putin winning the war in Ukraine.
“He’s already lost that war,” the president said.
Mr. Biden suggested the Russian president would eventually “decide it’s not in the interest of Russia, economically, politically, or otherwise, to continue this war. But I can’t predict exactly how that happens.”
He also expressed the “hope and expectation” that Ukraine would make enough progress in its current counter-offensive for there to be a negotiated peace settlement.
But over one month into the long-planned Ukrainian counter-offensive, some Ukrainians and their allies are expressing concerns over the slow progress of Kyiv’s troops.
Others believe that Russia’s defences will eventually shatter, allowing Ukraine to seize strategically significant territory and advance towards Crimea, Ukraine’s southern peninsula annexed by Russia in 2014.
Ukraine has long asked Western allies to provide more military assistance to help its resistance against the Russian invasion.
Although it did not get a solid timeframe for Nato membership at this week’s summit in Lithuania, it did receive from G7 members a long-term security framework to help guard against Russian aggression.
On Thursday, Ukrainian army commander Oleksandr Tarnavskyi told US broadcaster CNN that the military had received the first consignment of cluster munitions promised by the US in a controversial move.
He stressed that they would make a difference to Ukraine’s fortunes on the front line. “We just got them; we haven’t used them yet, but they can radically change [the battlefield],” Mr. Tarnavskyi said.
