Prigozhin and Wagner could not challenge Putin’s power directly, but they exposed his weakening grip

‘Invoking what happened in 1917 may mean that Putin realises he has left this too late, and allowed a real challenge to the stability of his power in Russia to develop.’ Photograph: Xinhua/Shutterstock

Once again Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine has taken a turn he never expected. The Russian leader’s brief speech denouncing the Wagner group’s Yevgeny Prigozhin and his significant 24-hour mutiny, called off late on Saturday, showed he knows just how dangerous the situation could be for him. If he had a convincing plan for how to deal with it, he didn’t share it.

Putin compared Prigozhin’s actions to the “intrigues” that he said brought down the Russian army, and then the state itself, in 1917. He wasn’t wrong – the rebellion was not unlike the way Russian army units left the front en masse during that military collapse.