‘Gray Hair’ – Putin’s Brutal Choice To Replace Chief Of Wagner Mercenaries

ALERT – While only one apparent video of Yevgeny Prigozhin, the former head of Russia's Wagner paramilitary group, has been released since their brief uprising last month and the Kremlin continues to discredit him, Vladimir Putin has announced his replacement.

And that replacement is far less mercurial and less media-conscious but just as brutal – or more so. (RELATED: Was Wagner Group's Russia ‘Coup' Staged By Putin?)

The new head of Wagner – which is being restructured and shorn of its heavier weapons – is Andrei Troshev, a hard-drinking but tough former Russian Army artillery colonel who helped create Wagner in 2014 and served as its chief of staff (or executive director).

He is known by his call sign, Sedoy, or ‘gray hair,' due to his mop of silvery gray hair.

According to Verstka, a Russian opposition website, Troshev was also the head of the group's “internal security service,” or the Wagner secret police.

He has previously been named in European Union sanctions documents, as well as French official documents.

Made a ‘Hero of Russia' by Putin for his Wagner Group exploits in Syria, the 62-year-old Troshev has also been active with Wagner in Africa and Ukraine. (RELATED: US Isn't Just Fighting ISIS In Syria – It's A Proxy War Against Iran)

Troshev reportedly directed Wagner's capture of Bakhmut in Ukraine, though Wagner's Telegram channels mainly discreetly called him the chairman of the “League for Protecting the Interests of Veterans of Local Wars and Military Conflicts.”

But his military combat experience goes back decades. As The Telegraph reported:

The 62-year-old's dreary call-sign “Grey Hair” disguises a career built on thuggish brutality. Troshev is a veteran of both the Soviet Union's war in Afghanistan in the 1980s and Russia's wars in Chechnya in the 1990s and early 2000s.

These were particularly brutal. Thousands of people were killed, Chechnya was destroyed and soldiers on both sides were mentally scarred for life.

From there, he followed many of his colleagues into Russia's Omon, a unit that meshes paramilitary and riot police duties. Its main job is to violently break up anti-government protests.

Since then, as CNN reported, Troshev has played a key, behind-the-scenes role in Wagner. The new Kremlin narrative aims to show (as Putin stated) that Troshev was Wagner's “real commander all along.”

Troshev is part of a close Wagner circle that includes Wagner Group founder Dimitriy Utkin, who is also a former Russian GRU military intelligence officer, as well as Wagner Group commanders Aleksandr Sergeevich Kuznetsov and Andrey Bogatov.

In less flattering examples of his battlefield prowess, Troshev reportedly was involved in decisions by Wagner in Syria to try to capture an oil field there in 2018. During that intense battle, U.S. air strikes decimated the group's attack force, killing up to 300 Wagner fighters. (RELATED: Air Force Says A-10 Attack Jet ‘Doesn't Scare China,' But What About Iran?)

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.

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