Prigozhin suspends recruitment for Wagner PMC

Wagner founder Yevgeny Prigozhin announced that he does not intend to continue recruiting mercenaries for his PMC.

“As long as we are not experiencing a shortage of personnel, we have no plans for a new bout of recruitment. However, we will be extremely grateful to you if you keep in touch with us, since we will certainly take up recruiting once again as soon as the Motherland calls on us to create a new group to defend its interests,” Prigozhin said.

He added that most of the PMC soldiers were now on leave after a “long period of very hard work”. He also said Wagner was continuing its activities in Africa and in training centres in Belarus.

“Today we are deciding on our next tasks, outlining them more and more clearly. Of course, these tasks will be carried out for the sake of Russia’s greatness,” Prigozhin announced.

On 2 July, the PMC suspended the work of its regional mercenary recruitment centres for a month.

On 14 July, the Belarusian Ministry of Defence reported that Wagner troops had arrived at a camp near Asipovichy. 

The Belarusian Hajun monitoring project reported that a total of 13 convoys with military equipment likely belonging to Wagner PMC had arrived in Belarus since 15 July. Radio Liberty Belarus said that Wagner’s camp in Belarus has at least 750 pieces of equipment.