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Ukraine could simply storm some Russian airfields and military bases north of Ukraine and take plenty of warplanes/helicopters. If there wouldn't be these damn nukes you have to fear if you'd do that.

Remember how some small groups in Russia set some planes on fire as if the airfields didn't have anyone defending them and it might be even worse now.

Wagner just randomly took those airfields without a single shot...

Looks like Wagner's march for justice was rather a march for independence. A show of force to get a deal, mostly for Prigozhin himself who doesn't care about the consequences for Russia.

The concessions made by the Russian government prove how serious the threat was. All of the rebels got off scot-free, that's something that wouldn't happen if Moscow still had had the capability to defend itself against several thousand mercenaries.

Given how quickly everything was over, it's hard to see any major changes for the dynamics in Ukraine and Russia in the short term. For the most part things will continue as if none of this has ever happened. Russia will continue to oppress its own people and run its propaganda machine, Ukraine will have to fight the war on the same terms as before, the West will remain cowardly despite Russia being shown to be not even remotely close to the powerful enemy that exists in the perception of the West.

Prigozhin has played his last card and it turned out to be a dud. Most likely, the following things are going to happen:

1. Prigozhin retires into a palace in Belarus (with or without windows or a tea room remains to be seen).

2. The Wagner group will fracture into groups of mercenaries taken over by the Russian forces (as ordered), groups that find "work in other places" (like Africa if they can get out) and groups that simply retire.

3. Putin is not worried anymore about Prigozhin. I highly doubt that the larger part of Russia even has an idea of what happened in the past 48 hours and why.

4. Shoigu will be using the remaining Wagners to attack whenever and wherever he thinks it is cool to do so. Assuming Shoigu isn't drinking tea with Putin at some incoming moment. Whatever the outcome of such an attack, Shoigu can get rid of possible mutineers, he doesn't care about those people, it's welcomed cannon fodder.

"Analysts" writing about "Putin is finished" simply don't grok the idea that Putin is very clever when it comes to stay in power.

Yup. Putin has exposed himself as a complete clown now.

He backed down from a small group of mercenaries AND fled Moscow to St Petersburg.

There are many details to which we know nothing in this story but one thing is for sure the behavior of Prigozhin was very very odd.

What we know:

• He successfully established somewhat secure ground in Russia
• successfully appealed to some Russian troops to join him
• successfully obtain support from the local population.
• There was no immediate opposition to his march on Moscow ( Kadyrov's forces were about to challenge them on the very south of their position leaving corridors to Moscow fully open).
• Putin is known to assassinate opposition and critics alike so even if Prigozhin got all he wanted from Putin he must know that he will be under constant assassination threats.
• Any concession he got from Putin, he could have given himself by taking power.

So what is it that made him back down?

The only thing that made sense to me is that something gave him the undeniable assurance of failing in his attempts.

For Putin we know:

• He wants to hold onto power more than anything else
• He's reckless with his own population even going as far as using them as props in false flag operations
• He's even more reckless to a populace that supports his opponents.

Given all that, my theory is, it was actually resolved under threats of using a tactical nuclear weapon on Prigozhin even if it meant heavy collateral damage.

The worst is, I'm not seeing many cons to such a measure compared to pros for Putin as a dictator.

• Tactical nuclear weapons are made to be used with their own troops nearby so the collateral damage would have been limited.
• The media could have then proceeded to paint Prigozhin as a nazi to justify the action (which would not be hard since he is one) and something akin to (it was revealed he made deals with Ukrainians nazis).
• The West would be discussing another war crime but won't do anything else since it would have been used inside Russian territory
• If anything, the threats of nuclear weapons would have become more real and given him more leverage over Western support to Ukraine.
• Could use this even to escalate to a full war and enact full mobilization
• Putin's opponents would lay even lower than before.

Of course, This would not have been without risk, but that's why "negotiating" first was a must. But if the negotiation failed, Putin would have been like a cornered rat that had nothing to lose anymore so would risk anything if it meant there was a possibility to retain power. And even if Putin had also the assurance to lose power in the process, he has been shown willfully and recklessly destroy anything it would lose grasp on anyway.

Maybe we'll get lucky and the infighting in Russia will start up again.

Well, Prigozhin has been trash talking Shoigu/Gerasimov for months already, which is fine, but the moment that Shoigu/Gerasimov unveiled plans to snatch Wager away from him, it became clear that they're going to come into conflict one way or another. Wagner is Prigozhin's baby, it's his only source of money, it's the only way he has power in this world and Shoigu was threatening to take it from him. To me, it looked like a last ditch effort to save his "baby" which was a very stupid and dangerous effort but perfectly in line with what someone like Prigozhin would do.

Then we come to his fight and we can say that, sure he secured some grounds but we don't actually know the extent of the "defections" to Wagner, Prigozhin's words can't be trusted, all we saw were poorly equipped soldiers and riot cops standing aside and letting them through but there's a huge difference between siding with someone and standing out the way of someone, who can blame them really? Foot soldiers wouldn't have stood a chance against that column, they'd be dead after firing a single bullet.

Even IF Wagner took Moscow, and that's a huge IF because it's frigging Moscow, Putin had already fled to St Petersburg and Shoigu/Gerasimov were god knows where. Wagner would NOT have held Moscow Imho, it may not have been the same day, it may not have been the next week, but eventually, Russia would have took back Moscow and killed them all and it wouldn't have needed a nuke and I think Prigozhin knew that, I think this is simply a bunch of stupid old men playing a game of who blinks first.

I think if Prigozhin did take Moscow, he wouldn't have got any concessions at all, he would have got a bullet to the head, I also still strongly doubt that Prigozhin has any intention of taking any sort of political power, I don't think he wants it, nor does he have any political support, as I keep saying, Prigozhin is a nobody in Russia's political sphere, he has no power there, sure he can take power with a bunch of thugs but they don't run countries, they kill people for countries, they wouldn't have been able to run shit.

It was apparently Lukashenko that made Prigozhin back down, Putin didn't even speak to him. Lukashenko negotiated on Putin's behalf.

There are still a few questions we need answering first though before determining who came out of this with more concessions.

• The MoD says that Wagner in Ukraine will sign to MoD but it says nothing about the Wagner involved in the coup having to sign to the MoD...It only says that their crimes will be forgiven, in fact, they're still holding some Russian airports. So what is happening? Are they going to Belarus as well? Will they be forced to sign a MoD contract too? Will Prigozhin still run them but only via Belarus? Will someone else run them instead?
• What happens to the Wagner in Africa? Russia officially pretends that they don't exist and they have nothing to do with them, will Prigozhin be able to run Wagner in Africa from Belarus? Is this a way for Prigozhin to get out of the Ukraine mess and abandon the rest of his men?

If only the Wagner in Ukraine have to sign to the MoD then Prigozhin likely won't give a shit, it was clearly his best who couped, the ones left in Ukraine are probably just Vatniks and Prisoners. If he can take the ones involved in the coup that Prigozhin still has quite a powerful mercenary force and a lot of loyalty to him still, including Utkin (hell why wasn't Utkin force to leave for Belarus?)

Either way though, Prigozhin is dumb and he has a clock on his life, Putin won't forgive or forget this, maybe it won't be during the war with Ukraine but it will be someday that I have no doubt, Prigozhin is the first to ever expose weakness in Putin and I can't see him letting that slide. I think it just depends when, if Prigozhin still has access to Wagner then he still has quite a formidable force that is loyal to him still.

FWIW...This is a useless distinction since they're both scumbags but just to be clear, it's Dmitry Utkin who is the Nazi, not Prigozhin. Utkin was involved in the coup and is a co-founder of Wagner but for some reason hasn't received the same banishment as Prigozhin despite him being just as important to Wagner. Actually, Prigozhin may be a Nazi too for all we know but I assume you're thinking of the dude with the Nazi tattoos and if so then yeah, that's Utkin, not Prigozhin. His callsign is "Wagner" too, Lol.