It is far from over, of course; we haven’t seen the final act of this tale. When Prigozhin took his troops back and left Rostov for the barracks after the settlement, he was greeted on the streets by delirious and fawning Russians chanting the name of Wagner, his private militia group, and throwing flowers—a Caesarean moment in modern history.

Putin has rarely been so humiliated. Whatever we know of former sovok KGB officers, they certainly do not forget public humiliation. Just ask the residents of Grozny. As Peter Hitchens wrote, Putin is the “milksop moderate” compared to what might come or what already waits patiently on the sidelines. “Believe me, there are devils in Russia far worse than anything most of us have seen in our lifetime, and you would not want them controlling a vast and slowly rusting arsenal of nuclear weapons, if you were wise.” But even a milksop moderate cannot just ignore this. …

This isn’t over. Russian rebel exiles usually get murdered abroad, or come back and foment more successful revolutions. We don’t know what might come next. Prigozhin knows that he is not safe, in either Russia or Belarus, and that Putin’s siloviki will carry their grudge. Putin knows that his rule is wounded with this display of defiance and mutiny, which will be a forerunner of more such behavior if this goes unpunished in the long run. The result is a slow power-struggle spiral, a return of the old demons.

[Yeah, this is nothing to celebrate in the West. Ukrainians can celebrate it as it means their enemy at war is in disarray, but the rest of us have to wonder what will come next. And while that time would have come eventually anyway, this display of fragility invites those with the worst instincts to act on the incentives now in place. — Ed]