Stefan Wolff, University of Birmingham and Tetyana Malyarenko, National University Odesa Law Academy
Blink and you could have missed it. Within 36 hours, the challenge mounted against the Kremlin by Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of the mercenary private military company the Wagner Group, was over. On Friday June 23 2023, Prigozhin ordered 25,000 of his troops on to a “march for justice”, which duly set out to confront the Russian president in Moscow. The following afternoon he called it off.