It wouldn’t be surprising to see a mercenary go completely bonkers. You have to be mostly bonkers to be one in the first place
Mostly they don’t know when to leave the party. Both Bob Denard and “Mad” Mike Hoare kept trying to revive the glory days of the 60’s well past their “best by” date. As a friend once said, nothing is more pathetic than an aging Romeo, I suppose it applies to soldiers for hire as well.
Ukraine ping
Seruzawa: [It wouldn’t be surprising to see a mercenary go completely bonkers. You have to be mostly bonkers to be one in the first place]
The thing about this coup attempt is that it’s far more risky than the bloodless kind you get from securing buy-ins in exchange for promises of promotion, which is how Brezhnev toppled Khrushchev. Yeltsin’s coup against Gorby was based on schmoozing. He got a couple of generals to go along, and both Gorby and the CCCP were history.
Prigozhin’s is force-on-force. No one knows if he has been able to get a few channels open to Putin’s commanders. But Prigozhin’s best bet is to have an insider, preferably a low-ranker with no resources behind him, plunge the dagger in, by perhaps taking Putin hostage.
However, to personally assume power, like Caesar, Prigozhin may need to be the man who routed the incumbent. Unlike Caesar*, who was an aristocrat and a consul alongside Pompey, Prigozhin wasn’t exactly part of the any pre-revolt succession scenario. So his legitimacy will have to be established the old-fashioned way, with a test of arms.
* Despite his noble lineage, Caesar encountered serious resistance because his efforts were both revolutionary and retrograde. He had overstepped his authority by not relinquishing his troops. His victory would mean, in essence, a return to monarchy. And that is exactly what happened. His destruction of the Optimates who opposed him was a precursor to the end of the Roman Republic and beginning of the Roman Empire.