Who can Putin trust to win his war in Ukraine?

With the thug boss of the Wagner Group out of the running for the moment, exiled to Belarus and neutered, politically and militarily, who will Putin turn to to make progress in his war in Ukraine? Until now the Wagner Group of mercenaries under Yevgeny Prigozhin has achieved more in terms of fighting back against the Ukrainian military than the full might of the Russian army. The Wagner troops, many of them convicts relieved to be out of jail and earning money, seemed to have more motivation and more killing ability than their often poorly trained regular army counterparts. So can Putin now rely on his regular forces under General Valery Gerasimov to adopt the same motivation and bring success against the Ukrainians who have never suffered from lack of motivation or loyalty to their cause. The bizarre deal under which those members of the Wagner Group who didn't take part in Saturday's aborted coup will be accepted into the ranks of the regulars is never going to work. The regulars will hate the mercenaries and the mercenaries will hate the regulars. I know this was Putin's plan anyway, to merge Wagner with the rest of the invasion forces, but I just don't see it working. For a start most if not all of the Wagner gang will despise General Gerasimov and the Russian defence Sergei Shoigu because their former boss now eating humble pie in Belarus told them enough times how useless and corrupt they both were. So there are going to be command and control problems. All of this is good news for the Ukrainians. However, Putin is almost bound to get tougher and more brutal and will probably start doing serious destruction to Kyiv. He will want revenge on a big scale for the humiliation he has suffered at the hands of his former loyal friend Prigozhin. Bumping him off on a dark night in Minsk might give him some satisfaction but his main revenge will be against Ukraine. Watch out, Kyiv.