The dust has now settled in Moscow and now everyone is wondering what’s going to happen next. Yevgeny Prigozhin marched on the capital city –in what he says was to protect the Wagner group. The events of the past weekend followed months of tension between Prigozhin and Russia’s military leaders who have been pushing for control over the mercenary group. But the Wagner leader was never going to give up his cash cow without a fight.

Any case…the one thing that we can take with some degree of certainty from these developments is that it cracked the veneer of Putin’s all-powerful authoritarian persona. The President looked weak as army tanks simply rolled onto Moscow—and the quick change in sentiment does not align with his image as an iron-fisted leader.

Now the world is waiting on Putin’s next move…

Will will he intensify the Ukraine war to win back his power stance or is this the chance Ukraine and his allies have been waiting for to cut the offensive off at its knees? The other, less likely scenario—is that this may have given Putin’s domestic political opponents an opportunity to boot him from power. We’ll just have to wait and see how the former KGB will react to being pushed into a corner.

Markets seemed fairly unfazed by the events. It did bump oil prices which started on a strong foot this week and we saw a rally in the price of gold as well.

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