President Vladimir Putin has ordered Wagner mercenary fighters to sign an oath of allegiance to the Russian state after Yevgeny Prighozhin, the volatile leader of the group, reportedly died in a plane crash.

Putin signed the order bringing in the change with immediate effect on Friday after the Kremlin dismissed suggestions that Prighozin had been killed on its orders, calling the assassination accusation an “absolute lie.”

Russia’s aviation authority has said that Prigozhin was on board a private jet that crashed on Wednesday evening northwest of Moscow with no survivors exactly two months after he led a failed mutiny and march on Moscow

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, a Putin ally who welcomed the banished mercenary group after the attempted coup, claimed Prighozin dismissed warnings about his safety before the deadly plane crash. 

“I told him: ‘Yevgeny, do you understand that you will doom your people and will perish yourself?’,” Lukashenko said he told Prigozhin. 

Prighozin’s reportedly responded, “To hell with it — I will die.” 

Lukashenko added that he later told Prigozhin and another Wagner boss, Dmitry Utkin, who was also reportedly on the downed plane, to “watch out” when they traveled to visit him, although the state news agency, BELTA , did not specify when that conversation occurred. 

The Kremlin declined to definitively confirm his death, citing the need to wait for test results.

Following the crash, which is believed to have killed eight others along with Prighozin and Utkin, a group of pro-Kyiv Russian fighters called on the Wagner Group to switch sides and join their ranks to exact revenge for the deaths of their leaders. 

“You are facing a serious choice now – you can stand in a stall of Russia’s defense ministry and serve as watchdogs for executors of your commanders or take revenge,” Denis Kapustin, commander of the Russian Volunteer Corps, said in a video published online lateThursday.

“To take revenge you need to switch to Ukraine’s side,” the commander said.

Kapustin, a far-right Russian national, founded the group a year ago and it has since taken credit for several military attacks on Russian regions that border Ukraine. 

“Let’s end the bloody meat grinder of the special military operation,” Kapustin said in his address to Wagner fighters, using the Russian official name for the invasion of Ukraine.

“After that, we will march to Moscow and this time we will not stop 200 kilometers before the Moscow ring road but go to the end,” he said, alluding to the end of Progohzin’s failed mutiny.

Others also made ominous comments following Prighozin’s death, including the Wagner-affiliated Telegram channel, Gray Zone, which posted obituaries and tributes for the Wagner founder and Utkin. 

“Already in the autumn Russia will be different: events are coming that will change the face of the country,” a message posted on the channel warned Friday. “Most – again will not be ready for this.”

Meanwhile, some believe the upcoming funeral for Prighozin may act as a flash point for the Wagner group.

Nigel Gould-Davies, a former British ambassador to Belarus who is now a senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), said the funeral would be significant.

“Prigozhin’s supporters may use it as an opportunity to eulogize him and his critique of the Kremlin’s conduct of the war — and could strengthen the hostility of a core of Wagner loyalists towards the Kremlin,” he said.

Russian investigators have opened a probe into what happened but have not yet said what they suspect caused the plane to suddenly fall from the sky.

Nor have the identities of the 10 bodies recovered from the wreckage been officially identified.

Asked if the Kremlin had received confirmation of Prigozhin’s death, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday: “If you listened carefully to the Russian president’s statement, he said that all the necessary tests, including genetic tests, will now be carried out. The official results – as soon as they are ready to be published, will be published.”

Peskov, who said Putin had not met Prigozhin recently, also said it was unclear how long the tests and investigative work would take.

It was therefore impossible to start talking about whether Putin would attend Prigozhin’s funeral, Peskov said.

“There are no dates for the funeral yet, it is impossible to talk about it at all. The only thing I can say is that the president has a rather busy schedule at the moment.”

With Post Wires