Vladimir Putin has spent decades trying to rebuild the USSR.
He wants so badly to recreate the Soviet Union.
And he just might...
The collapse, anyway.
I've been warning of Russia's collapse for months years, even.
And over the weekend we came close to seeing it.
Wannabe warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin and his malevolent band of mercenaries, the Wagner Group, got fed up with the front lines of the Ukraine conflict and made a beeline for Moscow.
I thought for sure this was it.
Finally, one of the cynical, self-interested leeches Putin surrounds himself with was shooting his shot.
I was shocked when he stopped and turned around. Because while Prigozhin may have walked away from Moscow, there's no walking away from an attempted coup.
Indeed, such gambits rarely (maybe never) end with both sides calling a truce.
Usually one party has to go and one surely will in this case as well.
The question is who.
Putin will never forgive Prigozhin. He will kill him. He simply cannot and will not let this slide. As long as Prigozhin walks this Earth he will be a liability.
But then why call a truce and let him flee to Belarus in the first place?
Because, at least for the time being, Putin's hands are tied.
Russian forces are bogged down in Ukraine, where they're currently fending off a counteroffensive. Having to draw resources away from that front to defend or liberate Moscow would essentially hand Ukraine a victory.
The war would be over for Russia at that point, and it'd be surprising if they were even able to hold on to Crimea.
And with that, there would be a significant, maybe even decisive, number of defections to Wagner.
Remember, no matter what Kremlin propaganda says, this war is not popular in Russia.
Roughly 200,000 Russians have died in this war. Most of them were conscripted to fight in the first place.
The ones that fill Wagner's ranks were pulled from prisons essentially promised pardons if they survived.
The troops that remain are inadequately trained, poorly outfitted, and bereft of morale.
Maybe you noticed that when Prigozhin made his move, nobody really tried to stop him.
To the contrary, Wagner forces were welcomed in Rostov-on-Don by Russian citizens bringing them food and water. They were cheered on.
No doubt, Prigozhin has made a name for himself in Russia. He's styled himself as a Russian hero fighting not just the Ukrainians but the Russian bureaucracy that is working behind the scenes to sabotage him.
He's convinced the most conservative and hawkish Russians that the war is being fumbled by the military's brass. But before staging his coup attempt, he also released a video in which he told the real truth that it's an unjustified farce.
The war, he said, was not to "demilitarize" or "de-Nazify" Ukraine. Rather, the eastern part of the country had been "plundered" by people from Putin's administration, the FSB, and Russian oligarchs.
"The Armed Forces of Ukraine were not going to attack Russia with the NATO bloc," Prigozhin admitted. "The Russian Defense Ministry is deceiving the public and the president."
That is indeed the truth. And speaking it will probably cost Prigozhin his life.
But there's the rub.