Blink and you could have missed it. Within 36 hours, the challenge mounted against the Kremlin by Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of the mercenary private military company the Wagner Group, was over. On Friday June 23 2023, Prigozhin ordered 25,000 of his troops on to a “march for justice”, which duly set out to confront the Russian president in Moscow. The following afternoon he called it off.
At that point his troops had advanced along the M4 motorway more than halfway between Moscow and the Russian military’s southern headquarters at Rostov-on-Don. His private army was within 200km (125 miles) of the Russian capital.
The crisis was apparently averted thanks to a deal brokered by Belarusian president, Alexander Lukashenko, and confirmed by the Kremlin. But this brief episode of turmoil will have lasting repercussions for Russia and for the war in Ukraine.
