Cooking Up a Coup    

Over 24 hours that stunned the world, Vladimir Putin faced an attempted coup by his own protégé, mercenary boss, and billionaire caterer Yevgeny Prigozhin. As the men with guns head back to base, is this the beginning of the end for the humiliated Putin?

The hardened criminal boss of a bloodthirsty mercenary group decides to train his guns on his patron, advances in an armored column toward the capital to carry out a coup, while the country’s armed forces look on, paralyzed.

Stunned by the speed of the rebels’ advance and the rapid surrender of military bases — including nuclear weapons — to the mutineers, the country’s elite fall silent, hedging as they wait to see who emerges on top.

But then, as the capital’s defenders start to throw up anti-tank ditches, the warlord is bought off by the intervention of a neighboring strongman, and, as quickly as it had blown up, the crisis abates.

What sounds like the plot for a melodramatic thriller was in fact real life in Russia over 24 hours last weekend. As a shocked world looked on, Yevgeny Prigozhin, a billionaire henchman of Vladimir Putin and head of the Wagner Group, a thousands-strong mercenary force fighting on the front lines against Ukraine, announced his intention to topple Russia’s military leadership, whom he accused of mismanaging the war against Kyiv.