The son of the deceased Yevgeny Prigozhin, 25-year-old Pavel Prigozhin, has headed a Rosgvardia unit that includes fighters from the Wagner PMC. This was reported by Russian media with reference to a representative of the unit in Perm.
The representative said that the company had resumed accepting volunteers for the war against Ukraine. However, he clarified that Wagner no longer accepts applicants who are serving a sentence in a penal colony.
A source in the Novosibirsk office of the Wagner group also said that recruitment has been going on for "two or three days". According to him, "so far, they are not taking convicted or sick people".
In September, The New York Times wrote about the struggle between the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) and the GRU for the assets of Yevgeny Prigozhin, which, according to the newspaper's sources, his son will try to join.
The interlocutors expressed the opinion that Pavel Prigozhin will be able to keep some of the assets, but he will need the Kremlin's approval.
On October 3, Pavel Prigozhin's telegram channel posted a message in which he stated that he had taken over the Wagner PMC after his father's death.
"I have taken over the command of the Wagner PMC, and very soon the Wagner fighters will return to the AFO zone and continue to exterminate the Nazis. There is no one else to continue my father's work except me. There is no time to be sad anymore," the post read. Later, the post was deleted, Kommersant noted.
On October 27, it was reported that former fighters of the Wagner PMC were offered to sign a contract with a new mercenary unit within the Rosgvardia.
This information appeared in chats of relatives of PMC fighters, but was later removed. Recruitment was opened even for those who had not previously participated in the war in Ukraine, as well as for people who had not served in the army and people with HIV and hepatitis, the report said.
Background. Earlier it was reported that the Wagner PMC militants were preparing Hamas for an attack on Israel, as only the Russians among Hamas' allies have experience in using drones with mechanisms for dropping on enemy equipment.