On June 25 of this year, I was lured out of bed with news  that Russian helicopters were shooting at Russian armed columns on their way to Moscow. When I got out of bed it was even better: twenty-five thousand armed Wagner mercenaries had seized control of Rostov-on-the-Don and were on their way to Moscow. 

Then it was all over by lunch. Prigozhin changed his mind, and called the whole thing off. 

Yevgeny Prigozhin, former hotdog salesman, now commander of Wagner private army

Blink - or sleep in - and you would have missed it. Never in my life has such a huge news story amounted to so little. 

For the briefest of moments - less than an afternoon in fact - it looked like the world world was entering into a new phase. One of the world's biggest and most problematic countries was about to implode in on itself. Who knows what it would look like afterwards, but at the very least, the Russian invasion of Ukraine was through. Putin couldn't possibly fight a civil war and a foreign war at the same time, especially if the rebels controlled the border areas. Russian forces would have to come home, or else wind up unsupplied and encircled. It was over.  

Until it wasn't. 

You ever been awoken from a deep sleep, in the middle of an amazing dream, because your fucking air conditioner chose that moment to "CLANG"?  That's what it felt like. For a couple hours, it really felt like Victory was around the corner. If you think we're disappointed, imagine how the Ukrainians must feel! 

Still, it's difficult to see how this could fail to benefit Ukraine somehow or other. At the very least it'll further demoralize Vatniks on the front line: bickering leadership is rarely condusive to morale. And a couple expensive Russian helicopters were shot down. . .

If I made too much of it, in my defense I wasn't the only one: I daresay most of the internet, experts and amateurs alike, assumed full-scale civil war was on. When twenty-five thousand armed mercenaries start marching to the capital, it's not an unreasonable assumption to make. Death and destruction seemed far more likely than *poof* - nothing. I'm in the middle of Antony Beevor's Russia: Revolution and Civil War, and this was more or less how the last Russian civil war started, so it was not exactly a ridiculous thing to think. 

What the hell was Prigozhin playing at? Who the hell knows. Commentators are all a tizzy because there really is no logical explanation (not that logic ever had a place in Russia) or rational justification for it. Was he bluffing? Did he realize he bit off more than he could chew? Did he think his support was not strong enough? Or some other end game we can't even imagine and won't know for years to come. That'd be my guess. 

The whole thing is weird. The only thing I'm certain of is you'd have to be a Grey Zone imbecile to think either Putin or Prigozhin has come out of this stronger.