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Wagner PMC founder Yevgeny Prigozhin leaves a cemetery before the funeral of a Russian military blogger who was killed in a bomb attack in a St Petersburg cafe, in Moscow, Russia.

REUTERS/Yulia Morozova

How popular is Yevgeny Prigozhin in Russia?

A new poll by the independent Levada Center in Moscow shows support for the warlord plummeted in the days after his failed putsch last weekend.

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Jess Frampton

Russia’s aborted coup, explained

What was Prigozhin thinking?

Anyone who watched Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin over the past few months knows that he had grown progressively unhinged in the run-up to his mutiny, just as his political position had become increasingly untenable.

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Russian President Vladimir Putin gives a televised address in Moscow.

Gavriil Grigorov/Kremlin via REUTERS

So Putin survived — now what?

As the dust settles over Yevgeny Prigozhin's rebellius interruptus, the single most brazen challenge to Kremlin authority in the history of post-Soviet Russia, there are more questions than answers about how the fallout might affect the future of the man who’s called the shots for 23+ years: Vladimir Putin.

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Fighters of Wagner private mercenary group pull out of the headquarters of the Southern Military District in the city of Rostov-on-Don, Russia.

REUTERS/Alexander Ermochenko

Hard Numbers: Russian uprising edition – Wagner’s ranks, Ruble tanks, Rostov’s neighbors, Pugachev’s echo

50,000: Wagner Group is believed to have about 50,000 armed men in total. Some of them are hardened combat veterans, but many have been recruited from Russian prisons. Prigozhin has led about half that number in Ukraine and those are the men he took on the march to Moscow.

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Wagner fighters near the headquarters of the Southern Military District in the city of Rostov-on-Don, Russia.

REUTERS/Stringer

Is the Russian rebellion over … or?

There really are no surprises like Russia surprises.

For about 24 hours, it looked like Russian President Vladimir Putin was facing the biggest political challenge of his life. His old friend Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the powerful Wagner mercenary militia, was leading a column of men toward Moscow in what Putin called an “armed rebellion.” The Kremlin charged him with “mutiny.” Moscow was placed on high-security alert. Putin jetted to St. Petersburg.

And then, just as suddenly as it started, it ended. After easily taking control of two key southern Russian cities – one of them being Rostov-on-don, a major command center for Putin’s war in Ukraine – Prigozhin called the whole thing off after receiving a phone call from Putin-pal Alexander Lukashenko, the president of Belarus.

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