Yet in the space of about 24 hours, he nearly lost his grip on the nation, and may well have been close to losing his own life. Putin, a despotic dictator as evil and mad as any the world has seen in the past half-decade, has had an ironclad grip on ruling the nation, as strong as the communist party did on the former Soviet Union for decades before its late 1991 collapse. There were, to be sure, other factors involved we may never learn of, but what was surprising to me was how swiftly the group moved, how it would have assuredly taken the Russian capitol had its leader not called off the assault. The group’s leader had accepted a deal to essentially be exiled to Belarus, crimes against he and his soldiers forgiven, and his soldiers given contracts to continue fighting for Russia. Then, just as quickly as it had started, it was over. Along the way it shot down just about every Russian aircraft that tried to intervene. The group is the one Russia pays when it has missions that really need to succeed, and the short-term mutiny saw the Wagner soldiers take three Russian cities, a major Russian military command center, and cover nearly 500 miles in its March toward Moscow - to within 120 miles of the city - in little more than 24 hours. Last weekend I was stunned to see the news that the Wagner Group - an extremely well-equipped, well-trained army of mercenaries largely employed by Russia - had turned on Russian President Vladimir Putin and was marching toward Moscow.
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