Fighters who previously fought in Ukraine for the Russian mercenary group Wagner have returned to the battlefield in the east of the country, the Ukrainian military reports, citing CNN.

Serhii Sherevaty, the deputy chief of communication of the Ukrainian troops in the east, said that the Wagner fighters who returned to Ukraine now work for the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation or its subordinate structures and joined as individuals, not as a unit.

“At the moment there are several hundred of them in our direction, on the eastern front, in different areas,” Serevatii told CNN on Wednesday.

But he tried to play down the importance of their return, saying that Russian forces in Ukraine are “understaffed, so any man will do.”

The Ukrainian military, which is participating in the offensive near the besieged city of Bakhmut, also told CNN that the “Wagner” has returned to the area.

“Wagner is here too,” the operator of the drone, nicknamed Groove, told CNN on Tuesday in eastern Ukraine.

“They came back, quickly changed commanders and came back here,” he said.

Groov said the group’s presence is partly intended to compensate for the lack of personnel on the Russian side.

Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyi, said that the “Wagners” signed contracts with the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation “for a short time to close the Russian hole in the direction of Bakhmut.”

Podolyak was also careful not to dramatize the return of former mercenaries. “Remember: PVK “Wagner” no longer exists,” wrote Podolyak on Wednesday on X, the former Twitter.

Oleksandr Tarnavskyi, the Ukrainian general leading the counteroffensive in the south, told CNN last week that Wagner’s fighters continue to appear “here and there” on the front lines in the country.

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