Putin orders Wagner mercenaries to sign oath of allegiance to Russia

President Vladimir Putin has ordered all employees of the Wagner group and other Russian private military contractors to take an oath of allegiance to the Russian state.

With immediate effect on Friday, Russia's president signed the decree which was published on the Kremlin website.

It applies to anyone participating in military activities in Ukraine, assisting the army and serving in territorial defence units.

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The oath includes a line in which those who take it promise to strictly follow the orders of Russian military commanders and senior leaders.

It comes two days after Wagner leaders were presumed killed in a plane crash and is seen as a move to bring such groups under tighter state control.

The Kremlin has called claims that it gave the order to kill the group's leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin, an "absolute lie".

The Wagner Group is a private Russian military organisation which has been active in Syria, Libya and Sudan, as well as Ukraine since the war broke out in the east of the country in 2014.

The group has long been headed by Prigozhin who had held close ties to President Putin but tensions between the group's chief and Moscow have mounted in recent months.

The mercenary group played a key role in the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, but in June, the group left Ukraine to march on Moscow in what at the time appeared to be an attempted coup.

Prigozhin had only this week made a public statement for the first time since his apparent attempted June mutiny, as he appeared in Africa.

The aircraft on which he was said to be travelling was reportedly in the air for less than half an hour before it crashed, according to reports from Russia's Tass news agency.