A source close to the leadership of the Russia-controlled part of the Ukrainian Donetsk region said on Saturday that a convoy of fighters from the rebel Wagner private military group is approaching the suburbs of Moscow and includes about five thousand men led by the group's top commander Dmitry Utkin, according to Reuters.

The agency reported that the source, "who has proven to be trustworthy in the past," stated that the Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin has fewer than 25,000 men at his disposal, and that about five thousand of them are in Rostov in the south of the country, the city which Prigozhin claimed to have taken control of and which is of great importance to Russia's war supplies in Ukraine.

The source also said that Wagner's plan for Moscow is to have its fighters take positions in a densely populated area.