I would tend to avoid any “ analysis” of this question published now, or in recent days. As we know from Bakhmut and Prighozhin’s stream of consciousness warfront posts about lacking ammo and Wagner’s weaknesses ( I tweet therefore I am)….it was theater. And successfully incited the Ukes to avidly send in some of their better units ….to be ground up.
Especially suspect is analysis coming from any mainstream media, US or UK think tanks which imo are horribly tainted by their lemming adherence to groupthink about what the West wants to believe to support its agenda, not what has actually been happening
There are some informative backgrounders written about Wagner:
Here is one. I will post others as I dig them out.
https://julianmacfarlane.substack.com/p/prigozhin-and-war-theater
Exactly why I posted the question and not my draft op-ed response to this question which I am still working on this weekend.