Very good piece from UkR and RU expert Tim Snyder.
Some of his views:
NATO is not the reason Putin invaded UKR. Putin invaded in order to get richer by stealing stuff. That's how RU works so that's all he knows. No one but a few on this board and other extrme right and left wing haters of the West think otherwise. The Wagner guy agrees and has said so.
By virtually every definition RU is fascist.
the mutiny happened because putin was going to eliminate wagner as an independent force.
That putin could not or did not fight wagner and had to buy him off...is an incredibly weakening aspect. That's the big takeaway.
the war will end if RU has more than one day of internal crisis like this.
Snyder:
I'm not sure enough attention has been paid to what Prigozhin said about Putin's motives for war: that it had nothing to do with NATO enlargement or Ukrainian aggression, and was simply a matter of wishing to dominate Ukraine, replace its regime with a Moscow-friendly politician (Viktor Medvedchuk), and then seize its resources and to satisfy the Russian elite. Given the way the Russian political system actually works, that has the ring of plausibility. Putin's various rationales are dramatically inconsistent with the way the Russian political system actually works.
Putin was concerned that Ukraine might serve as a model. Unlike Russians, Ukrainians could vote and enjoyed freedom of speech and association. That was no threat to Russia, but it was to Putin's own power.
Far too many people still think the US or NATO had something to do with Putin's personal decision to invade Ukraine, when in fact the character of the Russian system (and Putin's own words) provide us with more than enough explanation.
