Often the longer the time since a conspiracy – successful or otherwise – has taken place, the more details about it emerge. Not so in the case of Putin, Prigozhin and the latter’s supposed uprising against the former’s regime. Follow some of the questions that remain open, let alone provided with properly documented answers.

1. Who is Yevgeny Prigozhin? How on earth did he develop from a petty criminal, former jailbird and a street hawker of sausages into one of the most powerful and wealthiest persons in the whole of the Russian Federation?
2. During his advancement, and just before he mounted his coup—if a coup it was—what was his relationship with Putin like? Who owed (or owned) whom, for what, and as a result of what?
3. Is it true, as has been claimed, that America’s intelligence apparatus had advance notice of the intended coup?
4. If America’s intelligence apparatus knew of what was about to happen, how come the Russian one did not?
5. Did Prigozhin have allies within the Kremlin? If so, who were they and what role did they play?
6. How were the spearheads of the Wagner Group able to advance as fast and as far as they did?
7. Why was there scarcely any attempt at resistance?
8. Where was Prigozhin himself at the time these events took place? Did he really believe that, with a force of just a few thousand men, he would be able to bring down Putin’s government and set up a new one in its place? If not, what on earth was he trying to achieve?
9. Exactly what caused the coup—again, if a coup it was—to fizzle out and come to an end?
10. Where was Putin during the coup? What exactly did he do, and with the aid of whom?
11. How come Putin, not normally the most kindly-disposed character in the world, agreed to have Prigozhin’s men, as well as Prigozhin himself, cross into Belorussia where they would be immune from retaliation?
12. Why, after that, were accusations against Prigozhin and his men dropped, and why was the former’s confiscated property handed back to him?
13. If Prigozhin really sought asylum in Belorussia, how come he was later seen—or said to be seen—in St. Petersburg?
14. What happened to the camps Belorussia prepared to receive Prigozhin’s men? Were they ever used? If—which seems to be the case—not, where did the men go?
15. Does the Wagner Group, as a cohesive formation capable of carrying out organized military operations, still exist? If so, is Prigozhin still in command of it? If not, who is?
16. Both before and during the coup, Prigozhin’s verbal sallies were directed not against Putin himself but against minister of defense Sergei Shoigu and chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov. Following the coup’s failure, what has happened to these two men? Are they still in charge of anything, or have they been effectively sidelined?
17. Finally—how has the coup affected Putin and his government? Has his position been weakened, as some in Ukraine and the West in particular claim? Or has it become stronger? Or was the entire affair just a hiccup with no really visible consequences?

 It is as Churchill said of Russia: a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.