On June 23 the New Statesman’s contributing writer Bruno Macaes visited Ukraine’s head of military intelligence Kyrylo Budanov in Kyiv. They discussed the progress of the war, Russian propaganda (Budanov had been declared dead or dying), the 2022 Nord Stream attack and Russian plans for an attack on Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. Just three hours later, Yevgeny Prigozhin announced that his private military, the Wagner Group, would march on Russian army headquarters in Rostov-on-Don, as a punishment for its poor leadership. Shortly after midnight on 24 June, Prigozhin’s mutiny entered Russia and began marching on Moscow. By the end of the day, he had called it off.

Why did Prigozhin do it – and why did he stop? Was Putin’s authority terminally damaged? In this on-the-ground dispatch, Macaes looks at the roots of the mutiny, as well as what it reveals about the weaknesses of the Russian state: “It should,” he writes, “be regarded as a laboratory test for understanding Putin and his regime, and inform Western actions for what remains of the war in Ukraine.”

Written by Bruno Macaes and read by Will Lloyd.

This article originally appeared in the 30 June-6 July issue of the New Statesman. You can read the text version here.

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