Wagner’s Prigozhin misses window of opportunity but there is always a window to fall out of in Russia.

So near yet so far

In the high drama that is Russian politics we had ‘Putin’s Chef’ and close ally take over a cities of millions of people and seize military bases while insisting it was not a coup d’etat but just a ‘march of justice’.

Wagner’s private army got within a stone’s throw of Moscow then suddenly backed off- with the supposed intervention of Belarus’ Lukashenko.

Now Prigozhin has ‘security guarantees’ and will be exiled to Belarus. No one knows what will happen to the $47 million that was taken by the FSB raid on his premises in Saint Petersburg. The money was supposedly for Cargo 200- dead soldiers and their families.

Wagner forces, Kremlin spokesman Peskov announced, that remained in Ukraine will not be prosecuted and will sign contracts with the Russian army.

This whole drama does seem like theatrics and not much more. I suspected it could be from the beginning but I was trying to understand why. The most remarkable thing about Russia is it always tries to copy Erdogan’s Turkiye as well as Erdogan’s Turkiye try to copy it. The similarities between the two regimes is uncanny.