Why Prigozhin's short-lived Russian rebellion failed

Wagner mercenary boss Yevgeny Prigozhin over-reached and lost.

His hubris-fuelled insurrection failed through a combination of hot-headed ambition and his inability to read Putin's inner circle, of which he was a member, properly.

As one informed Moscow resident told me, the "system wasn't ready for the radical change" he wanted.

When he packed up his tanks and pulled out of the Russian military headquarters in Rostov-on-Don on Saturday, well-wishers rushed up to say thank you.

His battle-hardened troops, like veteran actors at a curtain call after a long and tense 24-hour performance, waved goodbye to an apparently adoring audience.

Whether it had it all been theater, we may never know, but in Prigozhin's mind on Friday evening when he called his heavily armed forces to action on Russia's not Ukraine's streets, the time had come for him to take center stage.

For weeks, months even, he'd been arguing Russia's war in Ukraine was being badly and unnecessary fought by an elite who couldn't care less how many Russian lives were lost.