Extract from ABC News
Analysis
By Europe bureau chief Steve Cannane
It's clear that Russian President Vladimir Putin's decision to launch a full-scale war against Ukraine has backfired catastrophically.
His plan to seize Kyiv within a few days in February last year was a grotesque folly that has had a disastrous impact on Russia and may end up leading to his own downfall.
More than 200,000 Russian troops have been killed or wounded, his economy has been hit by global sanctions and many of Russia's best and brightest have left the country.
Now he faces a mutiny from an angry man who has his own private army of at least 10,000 battle-hardened soldiers.
For the sake of Putin's war, Russia's citizens have had to sacrifice personal freedoms, economic prosperity and now face civil unrest. Many must be asking themselves what is the point of the 70-year-old remaining as president if he can no longer guarantee their security?
Putin has been in power for 23 years and has never looked more vulnerable than in the past 24 hours and it's all down to two of his own creations – the war in Ukraine and the ascent of Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin.
From street vendor to mercenary leader
Prigozhin rose from ex-convict and hotdog salesman to a caterer who became known as Putin's chef. He started his own private army that carried out some of Putin's dirty work in Syria and other countries before recruiting Russian prisoners to fight in the war in Ukraine.
He also helped found and finance the troll farms that meddled in the 2016 US presidential election. Mark Galeotti, author of Putin's Wars, says the president "created Prigozhin as a useful and biddable instrument."
Over recent months, Prigozhin has become increasingly critical of a series of failures of the Russian army on the battlefield in Ukraine and he has been vocal in blaming Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu and the head of Russia's armed forces, General Valery Gerasimov.
On Friday, he warned that his private army would blockade the key Russian military city of Rostov-on-Don until Shoigu and Gerasimov came to meet with him. He followed through with that threat and Wagner at one stage claimed it controlled all military sites in the city, including an airfield.
Video has been released of Prigozhin badgering a deputy minister of defence and general in Rostov, telling them they are responsible for failures in Ukraine.
"The guys are dying because you are pushing them into a meat grinder. Without munitions, without any thought, without any plan, you are just ageing clowns," he says.
Prigozhin's power grab
In the past 48 hours, Prigozhin has escalated his attacks on Russia's war in Ukraine and publicly criticised Putin for the first time.
First, he released a video on his Telegram channel that undermined Putin's whole premise for the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
"The war was not needed to return our Russian citizens and not to demilitarise and denazify Ukraine," he said.
"The war was needed by oligarchs. It was needed by the clan that is today practically ruling in Russia."
In other words, he's saying the reasons used to justify invading Ukraine last year were based on lies, though he mostly blamed this on Shoigu, rather than Putin.
Then, after Putin accused the Wagner group of treason during a televised address to the nation on Saturday, Prigozhin hit back again, saying, "No one is going to turn themselves in at the request of the president. We don't want the country to continue to live in corruption, lies and bureaucracy."
These words feel like a significant shift. And the escalation is not just in the rhetoric. Wagner's troops have been spotted heading along the M4 towards Moscow. Russian state media has reported that there were clashes between Wagner units and Russian forces in the city of Voronezh.
Prigozhin insists this is not a coup. Instead, he calls it a "march for justice." That's not the way the Kremlin sees it. President Putin has described the mutiny as a "stab in the back".
What happens next is anyone's guess. A lot will depend on behind-the-scenes negotiations with Prigozhin. Did he have any of his demands met? Has he completely backed down? There are reports that Wagner is pulling out of Rostov. But Prigozhin does not seem like a man who will go quietly.
What does this mean for Ukraine?
While Russia turns its focus inwards, Ukraine benefits.
As President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said via Telegram, "Russia's weakness is obvious. Full-scale weakness."
Ukraine's armed forces will be looking to exploit that weakness and the chaos and division festering in the ranks of the Russian military as it pushes on with its counteroffensive.
Deputy Defence Minister of Ukraine Hanna Maliar says their armed forces launched a large-scale offensive in the wake of the chaos.
"The Eastern grouping of troops today launched an offensive in several directions at the same time," she said in a Telegram post.
It was Wagner who was responsible for Russia's only recent military gain in Ukraine – capturing the city of Bakhmut in the Donbas. If its troops are now engaged in seizing buildings in Russian cities, rather than fighting in Ukraine, that can't be good for Russia's war.
If Russian troops are brought back from Ukraine to quell a Wagner rebellion at home, that will open up even more opportunities for Ukraine on a frontline that is about as long as the drive from Sydney to Brisbane.
Even if Putin survives this mutiny, his credibility and authority have been undermined, and he faces the possibility that any ongoing civil unrest could lead to more humiliating defeats on the battlefield in Ukraine.
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