The 24 hours of chaos in Russia from the rebellion of Yevgeny Prigozhin and the 25,000 Wagner mercenaries he leads could be a staging by Vladimir Putin.
International experts and experts in the Russian secret services raise doubts about how the FSB, the successor to the KGB, was not informed earlier about all the developments that shook Russia at midnight on Friday and throughout Saturday.
They say the manner in which the Wagner group retreated from its goal of overthrowing the Russian military command raises strong suspicions that it was all a set-up and a ruse to benefit Vladimir Putin.
Experts say that after this event, Vladimir Putin has the pretext and free hand to dismiss the entire military chain of command, starting with his Minister of Defense, Sergei Shoigu, and to do so with little cost to his image among citizens.
Second, according to the Russian media, Evgeny Prigozhin and Wagner will take refuge in Belarus, while the group continues with the recruitment campaign on Telegram, which means that it will not disband.
The move to Belarus could be a tactic from which Putin can command his mercenaries in a second attempt to take Kiev, or at least open two fronts for Ukraine, which would force the latter to weaken its ranks in the counterattack launched in Donbas and Crimea, in the east of the country./Topnews