Right...just so everyone knows:
Prigozhin wasn't randomly hanging around enjoying his retirement. Up to this point, he openly refused to leave Russia or live in exile, and apparently was still openly opposing Putin. As everyone knows, even toothless public opposite can be dangerous to authoritarians since their rule tends to rest heavily on illusions of power and cults of personality. Prigozhin was a public figure with his own army that literally marched up to the capital. And he was openly defying Putin--obvoiusly under the threat of war since he still controlled Wager.
The man was a legitimate threat to Putin's rule, and I think he was playing a game of chicken with him. And Putin seems to have blinked. And now there's some murmurings of the Wagner forces potentially taking up arms.
Who the actual moron in all of this is going to come out in the next few days or weeks:
- If nothing significant happens, then Prigozhin was indeed a moron who thought he had more leverage than he actually did.
- If Wagner's forces do mobilize and start a civil war that Putin can't immediately crush, then Putin was the moron for incorrectly calling a bluff.
Of course, Prigozhin still died, so he's no genius, but I think people are just gravitating towards "Obviously he's a complete jibbering moron" because they just want to.
As a final note, it actually does make sense for the Wagner leadership to all be on the same plane, from a paranoia standpoint. If Prigozhin was worried about being sold out to Putin by his partners, then of course he's going to take them with him on a plane, as a way of making sure that they'd go down with him. Kind of a suicide pact situation.
People are really jumping to what they want to be true, I think. (Not that there isn't a good possibility of it just really being that simple. It's just that people are way too cocksure of themselves, and it's annoying.)