President Putin knows the history of his country. Once before, an uprising in Russia was followed by war, destruction, the deaths of millions.
Whatever the mutinous Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin may have promised himself from his threatened “March of Justice” on Moscow, it is hard to imagine that the mercenary leader acted alone. Prigozhin, a veteran criminal and schemer, may have hooked up with disaffected Russian officers before the uprising he just instigated. Many high-ranking Moscow uniforms will reject Putin’s amateurish war policy; the President is heating up the Russian army in Ukraine. Now Prigozhin seems to have successfully negotiated something with the Kremlin in the first round. Why else should he, who had just been insulted by Putin himself as a traitor, suddenly give in and call down his mutinous soldiers?