A coup or not a coup, that was Putin's question

Vladimir Putin has had a helluva scare from which he may not recover fully. A convoy of mercenary Wagner Group armoured vehicles heading for Moscow and mutiny in the air. For a few hours Putin must have thought his time had come. But Russia, in the modern era, is not very good at coups. Gorbachov survived despite some devious machinations against him, and Yeltsin, too. Putin has survived, for the moment, because of the timely intervention by the Belarus dictator, Alexander Lukashenko, who persuaded the Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin, to turn back to avoid bloodshed. The terms of the decision were approved by Putin which must surely mean the Kremlin boss has offered his former top friend sme sort of deal. Perhaps the sacking of the defence minister Sergei Shoigu or General Valery Gerasimov, the chief of staff and overall commander of the war in Ukraine? We will have to wait and see. But this guy Prigozhin is a force to be reckoned with and Putin will be even more wary of him in the future if the Ukraine war continues to go badly. Despite the turn-around I predict this is the beginning of the end of the Putin era. The bad boys of the Wagner Group, many of them released convicts, came within 200 miles of Moscow. As they advanced there were urgent meetings going on in Western capitals. Joe Biden and his national security team were all heads down wondering what was going to happen and what the US should do about it. Putin was facing the biggest shock of his life but I doubt many tears were being shed on his behalf.