Speculation in western sources is he was gambling on various people joining his march on Moscow (army generals, units, general public, etc.) and the gamble didn't pay off. When that didn't work he was able to negotiate an exit that wasn't him getting killed given Wagner's power compared to the Russian armed forces.

This won't be the end of it though. Putin will want him dead.

Just one problem: Whenever Putin wanted someone dead in the past, guessed who he called.

Yup. The Wagner Group. They did damn near ALL of his dirty work. They carried out his assassinations, set up his troll farms, committed his war crimes.

So now, even though he may have backed down, everyone in Russia knows that Putin no longer has an entire legion of professional monsters on his proverbial speed dial.

People were pointing and laughing at how pathetic Putin looked while trying to make himself look authoritative and intimidating even back when things were still going his way (my favorite being the hockey game where he scored eight goals, then slipped and face-planted while doing a victory lap). I seriously doubt he's going to find too many people willing to stand with him now.

"It was just a prank bro."

I hope that the madness just ends soon. This has gone on long enough.

There's also that $6.2Billion that "supposedly" was given extra to Ukraine. What if it actually didn't go to Ukraine but was used as a bribe to buy him out? The US government didn't have to mention about that "error" but they did. Why...

Didn't Belarus' president negotiate something to get him to stop?

I wonder what was going on there... I read that the guy was going after the Russian military leader (Sergei something, forgot his last name), whom he was critical of