Comment: Russo-Ukrainian war commentator and military historian 'Big Serge' penned the following article shortly after last weekend's mutiny/coup in Russia, so his take on it has possibly evolved by now, but this detailed, initial analysis, and thus how he reached his conclusions, are worth reading.
Needless to say, the spectacle of a Russian mercenary group making an armed march on Moscow, and of Wagner tanks and infantry cordoning off Ministry of Defense buildings in Rostov, sparked widespread confidence among the western commentariat that the Russian state was about to be toppled and the Russian war effort in Ukraine would evaporate. There were confident and outlandish predictions pushed out in a matter of hours, including claims that Russia's global footprint would disintegrate as the Kremlin recalled troops to defend Moscow and that Russia was about to enter a state of Civil War. We also saw the Ukrainian propaganda machine kick into overdrive, with characters like Anton Gerashchenko and Igor Sushko absolutely bombarding social media with fake stories about Russian army units mutinying and regional governors "defecting" to Prigozhin.
There's something to be said here about the analytic model that prevails in our time - there's a machine that instantly springs to life, taking in rumors and partial information in an environment of extreme uncertainty and spitting out formulaic results that match ideological presuppositions. Information is not evaluated neutrally, but forced through a cognitive filter that assigns it meaning in light of predetermined conclusions. Russia is *supposed* to collapse and undergo regime change (Fukuyama said so) - therefore, Prigozhin's actions had to be framed in reference to this assumed endgame.
Comment: Sound conclusions. Our only quibble would be to take issue with downplaying "Putin's four dimensional chess game." In the above scenario, Putin was taken by surprise last Saturday morning, but then reacted well.
More likely, he saw it coming and let it manifest just enough so that everyone could see Prigozhin for what he (and Wagner under his influence) had become: a danger to Russia.