As armoured vehicles of mutinous mercenaries from the Wagner Group rolled towards Moscow on June 24, Russia was on edge, and the world watched, stunned.
Led by Wagner chief and catering tycoon Yevgeny Prigozhin, the fighters, several thousand strong, had turned against the Russian high command and had effortlessly taken Rostov, a major city in the country’s southwest, before beginning a rapid advance towards the nation’s capital.
