Mutiny highlights weakness of leader's gangster state

AS a former soldier who now runs The HALO Trust, the world’s leading NGO tackling conflict, I have followed the war closely in Ukraine, where my 900 staff are saving lives by clearing landmines.

- James Cowan

After months of equilibrium in the conflict, it has been quite a weekend. A video from Rostov showed a street cleaner wielding his dustpan like any normal Saturday, while around him Wagner fighters occupied public buildings. Russian society had to face the incongruity of a former hot dog seller turned mercenary looking as if he might march on Moscow with his private army. As Britain discovered in a less extreme way with the Liz Truss premiership, countries can suffer crises that pass so quickly that they appear almost never to have happened. Yevgeny Prigozhin now has a deal that frees him from prosecution and allows safe passage to Belarus.

It’s worth recalling why he became involved in the war in the first place. The failure of the regular Russian army to deliver a quick victory led Vladimir Putin to call on Prigozhin and the Wagner Group to win where conventional soldiers had failed. Buoyed by years of success with Wagner in Syria and Libya, Prigozhin decided to make his mark on the Ukraine war in the town of Bakhmut. A four-month battle of attrition ensued. The fact that the town had no strategic value was of no concern to him.