The extraordinary sight of the Wagner group chief, Yevgeny Prigozhin, ordering his private troops across the border from Ukraine – first into Rostov-on-Don and then towards Moscow – presaged a sequence of events that could change the course of Russian history. While the mutiny was quickly aborted, it seems unlikely to be the end of it either for Prigozhin or for Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, who now looks seriously weakened.
The dissonance of the enemy within is captured brilliantly by Neil Jamieson’s cover artwork this week, a Wagner military patch portraying Putin’s targeted face.
