Here’s one of the better articles conjecturing on the question: what just happened in Russia? From Tom Luongo at tomluongo.me:
After this weekend’s whirlwind events in Russia we’re left with a lot more questions than answers about what happened with Wagner Group’s Yevgeny Prigozhin’s abortive rebellion against Moscow. I’m not here to answer any of those questions definitively because we’ll never really know.
That said, if what I think happened is anything close to the truth then this may be one of the greatest non-battlefield victories in modern history.
Let’s start with what we know. Prigozhin’s been running his mouth for months about lack of support from the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) while his boys did all the heavy lifting in Bakhmut. His issues with Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu are pretty well known. It’s also likely that there’s zero love loss between Prigozhin and General Valeri Gerasimov either.
Pissing contests between military commanders are not unheard of, after all.
You could easily make the argument that Wagner was brought in to clean up the mess made by Shoigu while Gerasimov undertook the bigger task to reorient the Russian military away from Battalion Tactical Groups (BTGs) towards an infantry-focused army more capable of taking and holding territory.
There is this looming war with NATO after all.
It may all work out in Russia’s favor with the right commanders shuffled into place.
As for weakening Putin you can check the polls and it is probably 80% or higher approval.
Things will turn unpleasant very fast if the Russian people start to hate the former West with the passion that was seen during WWII against the NSDAP invaders.
Stupid NSDAP party apparatchiks in gold trimmed brown uniforms (golden peasants) decided to machine gun and force labor camp what could have been a powerful resistance army.
Fun Trivia-Prigozhin owns a movie making company.