Point three seems entirely noncredible to me. They were doing a thunder-run, by all appearances. That doesn’t just happen. You don’t accidentally cross the Rubicon, you don’t just happen to go “whoopsie, we’re in the Moscow Oblast, aren’t we goofy goobers!”.

And then the assertion: “However, I want to emphasize that image has always been a secondary concern for Putin.” Isn’t that just… objectively false? Image has always been huge for Putin. He presents himself as a strongman, a man able to lie to your face, but is so powerful that you, the Russian citizen, can do nothing about it.

I think Beau of the Fifth Column’s hot take is more likely – Wagner wanted out of the war for a host of reasons, they especially didn’t want to be taken control of by the MoD and essentially dissolved into the state apparatus. So Prigozhin decided to gun for Moscow in order to be able to force Putin’s hand and let Wagner return to Africa, doing the PMC stuff that Wagner has been running around doing for years. This has probably been something he’s been trying to negotiate for a year or so, but it all just came to a head with Bahkmut and the new contracts MoD was trying to push.