The Wagner Group halts its march on Moscow

THE THREAT of armed insurrection against Vladimir Putin abated on June 24th as suddenly and dramatically as it had erupted. In the morning Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the Wagner mercenary group, sent his armoured columns on a 1,000km race to Moscow, claiming to come within 200km and causing alarm in the Kremlin. But by evening he ordered his war-hardened veterans to turn back, saying he did not want to spill Russian blood. Social-media reports suggest his fighters were starting to pull back. A Kremlin spokesman said Mr Prigozhin would leave for Belarus.Precisely what Mr Prigozhin hoped to achieve through his insurrection, and what he might actually have obtained, remains unclear. On one telling, Mr Prigozhin bowed before the might of the Russian state and is lucky to be alive. On another, given the extraordinary ease with which he rolled towards Moscow, he may have extracted some as-yet-unspecified deal on, say, military leadership. Either way, Mr Putin has shown he can no longer maintain order among his warlords. He has been greatly weakened by the challenge—and in his world weakness tends to lead to further instability.