I think I know exactly what’s going on now. This thing about prigozhin’s mutiny is simply a con job a set up for putin to jettison his favorite capo while disguising disbandment as end of mutiny.
I’ll elaborate later but basically, the con job is to cheat these mercenaries their pay, their future, set up safe exit for prigozhin and be able to safely disarm these mercenaries. The biggest problem is how to disarm the wagners and force them into redeployment or retirement.
Putin knows he will still need a very small subset of the Wagner commanders but definitely not the excons and not those who joined later.
Putin will keep those within a very small circle of wagners close to heart for various other secretive missions but putin just want the majority of wagners to be regimented under military command for various reasons.
So any wagners who won’t join military, putin is ambivalent as long as they are disarmed and disbanded to go separate ways. Putin can easily deal with disbanded unarmed individuals.
The last thing that putin need is someone else in the excon wagners became rogue loose cannon beyond prigozhin’s control. But because wagners are mercenaries and so since they’re excons, putin has to figure a way to force them to continue beyond the excons’ contract. Solution-get them to sign new contract was the original stupid idea. Basically a breach of the original contract.
