Wagner's coup won't change course of Ukraine war - but Putin is weakened
Ukrainians watched in glee as Russia seemed to implode on itself on Saturday as the mercenary warlord who destroyed swathes of their country turned on tyrant Vladimir Putin and marched on Moscow to depose his military top brass.
A series of dramatic hours followed - but it's unlikely that the insurrection lasted long enough to have any immediate impact on the battlefield.
Early Saturday it emerged that the leader of the Wagner Company, Yevgeny Prigozhin, planned to march on Moscow to depose the Kremlin's military leadership with his band of 25,000 war-hardened and murderous mercenaries in tow.
There was a glimmer of hope as it looked like Putin might be forced to refocus on a new threat - his former friend and the head of his private army - who had scored Russia its only decisive victory across the border.
A Ukrainian sniper walks through the trenches in Bakhmut (Getty Images)
Though it's unlikely to make any dramatic changes on the battlefield, Saturday's events have showed just how fragile the Russian leadership is.
Former BBC Foreign Correspondent and author James Rodgers, who recently published a book about journalists in the Russian capital called Assignment Moscow, believes there's no question whether this has severely dented Putin's reputation.
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"I don't think there's any question that his authority has been significantly damaged, that isn't to say he can't recover from it," Dr Rodgers tells The Mirror.
"But this I mean, just to put this in context, this is entirely without precedent since Vladimir Putin was first elected Russian president in 2000.
Putin accused Prigozhin of treason during a televised address on Saturday (AP)"Since then, although he wasn't technically president for four years, he has been the most powerful man in Russia, and no one has ever challenged him in this way before.
"So, yeah, you know, as I say, this is hugely significant. And whenever he does leave office, this will no doubt be mentioned as a stage along the way."
One senior Ukrainian lawmaker said if Wagner's mutiny had lasted more than 24 hours, it may have also been able to change the course of the war itself, forcing the tyrant to refocus his efforts on the domestic troubles.
However, now that the "coup" has been crushed, "there will be no big changes on the battlefield in the very short term", MP Oleksiy Goncharenko said.
Wagner soldiers arrive in Rostov-on-Don on Saturday (AFP via Getty Images)That's not to say that Ukraine has not benefitted from the brief insurrection.
Goncarenko believes that Saturday's events have proved just how fragile the Russian state is and that it could collapse "at any moment".
"I think that this makes us closer to our victory", he said.
Though short-lived, weapons and troops were reassigned from the frontlines at a crucial point as Kyiv continues to intensify its counter-offensive. .
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Wagner claimed to have taken control of Bakhmut in may (Telegram @concordgroup_official/)The loss of Putin's army for hire from the battlefield will be a more devastating below seeing as they were the only unit to give Russia a decisive defeat over the Ukrainian army in Bakhmut.
The battle of Bakhmut lasted nine months and has left the 400-year-old city in the east of the country completely levelled, with thousands now dead.
It came after Ukraine employed a strategy of exhausting the ill-disciplined Russian army.
: A civilian poses with the members of the Wagner Group (Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)On the international stage, Wagner has also been seen as an emblem of Russian power and projection, with the ability to reach conflicts in far flung corners of the globe.
Those not heeding warnings of Moscow, even if they're nowhere near Russia, would have to weigh up whether they wanted the boots of Putin's shadowy private unit on their soil.
It's almost impossible for Putin to replace his crack squad of mercenaries at short notice, so that element of his power will be lost for now.
In recent months, Prigozhin has shared a series of raging tirades criticising the "military leadership" in the halls of the Kremlin, namely defence minister Sergei Shoigu and Armed Forces chief General Valery Gerasimov.
Wagner soldiers were welcomed warmly despite planning to mount an attack on the Kremlin itself (AFP via Getty Images)He accused them of purposefully bombing Russian troops and incompetence.
But the most dangerous outburst came on Friday when in a series of audio and video messages, Prigozhin attacked Putin without using his name when he accused Moscow of lying about their justification for the Ukrainian war.
He said that the narrative of the "denazification" of Ukraine and it being controlled by NATO were a load of rubbish, an unprecedented challenge to the despot considering journalists have been jailed for making similar statements.
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