Why Putin Let Prigozhin Go
The real “higher goal” of the deal was not what a Kremlin spokesperson suggested.
In announcing that Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of the short-lived rebellion against Russia’s military leadership, would be permitted to “retire” to Belarus in exchange for stopping his “March of Justice” to Moscow, the Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov explained that the deal, purportedly brokered by Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko, “was for the sake of a higher goal—to avoid bloodshed, to avoid internal confrontation, to avoid clashes with unpredictable results.”
That sounds very noble, except that only a few hours earlier, Peskov’s boss,
