Wagner group employees asked to swear allegiance to Russia after Prighozin's death

Russian President Vladimir Putin has asked all employees of the Wagner Group and other Russian private military contractors to sign an oath of allegiance to the state.

The decree came into force on Friday, just two days after Wagner Group chief Yevgeny Prigozhin was officially declared dead in a plane crash.

It states that anyone working on behalf of the Russian military for its "special military operation" in Ukraine must swear a formal oath of allegiance to Russia. The move is being seen as Putin's attempt to reassert his authority after the Wagner rebellion in June.

Prigozhin, who led a rebellion against Putin in June this year, died in a plane crash along with nine other passengers on Wednesday. The 62-year-old was travelling in a private plane when it crashed between Moscow and Saint Petersburg. All 10 people on board died, including three crew members.

In a statement issued confirming Progozhin's death, Putin said that Wagner Group employees were also on board the plane. The crash happened exactly two months after Prigozhin and Wagner led a rebellion against Putin.

Prigozhin's men had been at the forefront of the Russian assault in eastern Ukraine for months. The armed rebellion led by him had sparked a crisis in Russia, but Vladimir Putin somehow managed to get out of the crisis as the rebels stood down after striking a deal with the Kremlin.

Russian authorities have launched an investigation into the crash, and Putin has promised that the probe "will be carried out in full and brought to completion."

Meanwhile, United States President Joe Biden and Ukrainian presidential aide Mykhailo Podolyak have suggested Putin's involvement in Prigozhin's death.

"I don't know for a fact what happened, but I'm not surprised," the US president said. "There's not much that happens in Russia that Putin's not behind. But I don't know enough to know the answer."

However, the Kremlin has dismissed the allegations, stating that they are complete lies.

"In the West of course, this speculation comes from a certain angle. It's all a complete lie. Of course, when we talk about this issue we should be guided only by facts," Putin's official spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, told the BBC.

"We don't have many facts at the moment, the facts need to be clarified during the official investigation, which is being carried out now," he added.

However, it needs to be noted that the Wagner chief's death is the latest in a string of such incidents that have been reported in Russia since its invasion of Ukraine last year in February. A number of prominent Russians have died in unexplained circumstances over the last year. A majority of these deaths were deemed accidental, like falling out of windows or down the stairs.