In all the years I have been covering Russia I can remember only a few weekends as bonkers as this one. There have been a few: October 1993 and Yeltsin’s tanks; August 17, 1998 when the ruble collapsed, starting that financial crisis; Black Tuesday in December 2014 when it collapsed again, and the start of Nord Ost theatre siege in October 2002. I was in Moscow for all of these. But nothing like that has happened for more than a decade.

And it was all over in less than 24 hours. Around midnight on June 23 the Wagner forces crossed into Russia and by 7:30 am their boss Yevgeny Prigozhin was sending out videos from the centre of Rostov-on-Don after his men entered and took over the headquarter of the Southern Military District with barely a shot fired.

The uprising was not entirely bloodless; there are reports of half a dozen Russian attack helicopters being short down by Wagener killing about a dozen pilots and an unknown number of Wagner troops. There are also reports of that more than half of Wagner’s forces refused to participate in the insurrection.

After Prigozhin claiming to start to march on Moscow (something I am not sure I believe, as I saw no hard evidence that Wagner ever left the city and all the roads north were quickly closed, according to Yandex maps, which is not state-run), by the end of the day Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko had cut a deal with him and it was all over.

Yandex maps showed all the roads between Rostov and Moscow had been closed early in the day on June 24.

All the charges against Prigozhin have been dropped and he has been promised safe passage to Africa, where he has military operations in several countries. None of the Wagner forces will be charged either, and those that did not participate in the “march of justice” will be offered contracts with the regular army. And Prigozhin's nemesis, Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu, will be sacked, according to the Belarusian sources commenting on the details of the deal. Personally, I doubt that part of the deal will happen, as that would make Russian President Vladimir Putin look even weaker than this whole debacle already has.

Those are more or less the facts of the story, but everyone is still asking: WTF actually just happened?

The commentary is now pouring out like the water from the Kakhovka dam as everyone piles in with their favourite take or spins their pet narratives.

Trying to keep the head above water I think there are a few obvious things that we can be sure of. Putin knew that Prigozhin was a loudmouthed loose cannon, which is probably why the Kremlin just moved to neutralise him, but he was not expecting this.

The “Russian coup” also definitely makes Putin look weaker, but it remains to be seen if it weakens him. It will also undermine his standing amongst the Kremlin elite, especially the hawks in the military and security services, but again it remains to be seen if that makes any difference.

If the clash had dragged on, and especially if fighting had broken out, that would have been to Ukraine’s great advantage, but now it’s all over so quickly, I doubt it has had any impact on the war.

Beyond these conclusions I not sure much can be said with confidence. Many are saying the episode has mortally wounded Putin’s administration and will embolden the partisan groups inside Russia. Other say that it has changed the internal narrative amongst the people and paves the way to Putin’s ouster, or at least will prevent his standing in the 2024 presidential elections. But at this point I think a lot of this is little more than wishful thinking.

The biggest unknown is just what was Prigozhin thinking? Rather than go down a rabbit hole on this one, I’ll just give you my take, as there are scuds of detailed analysis out there already now and I suspect it’s starting to get boring.

The first point to note that while Prigozhin is in the Kremlin circle he is not of the Kremlin. All his power and influence are drawn from his personal association with Putin and that has now been removed. Indeed, it was removed earlier last week when Putin endorsed Shoigu’s order for all Wagner troops to sign up with the regular army by July 1.

Prigozhin had served his purpose. His boys had recaptured Bakhmut and given the Kremlin a badly needed victory it could use as PR. Putin couldn’t afford to have so many regular soldiers and conscripts die in that fight, which was always going to have a very high casualty rate, and Wagner mercenaries and convicts were entirely expendable.

However, Prigozhin was milking his victory for all it was worth and is widely seen as having political ambitions. Specifically, his noisy expletive-laden public criticism of the Defence Ministry was becoming embarrassing. He was attempting to set himself up as an independent player, and as he is not of the Kremlin this was unacceptable, so the Kremlin decided to clip his wings.

To me, this is similar to the Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Alexander Lebedev stories; both were oligarchs that dabbled in politics (Lebedev was an actual MP at one point), but both who were clearly outside Kremlin control and attempted to create independent power centres. One of Khodorkovsky’s close associates once told me he had presidential aspirations, although he never said so in public. In both cases the Kremlin quickly neutralised the two men when things started to become uncomfortable. Khodorkovsky was put in jail. Lebedev moved to London and hasn’t come back. Prigozhin was playing a similar game and becoming popular. There are reports of crowds applauding him as he left Rostov this morning and his open defiance of Shoigu was starting to be a problem.

Once the order was issued to take Wagner away from him, I think he just lost it and threw his toys out of the pram. There was little he could do to prevent his losing control of Wagner without directly challenging the president. And Wagner was lost, but he refused to accept that so, being the tough man, he marched on Rostov.

I seriously doubt that Prigozhin had any plan beyond this. Prigozhin is thug and an opportunist of the 1990s vintage. He thrives on chaos. His “plan” was simply to just make as much trouble as he could and then see what happened. Some sort of opportunity would present itself; if he even thought that far ahead.

A coup d'état could not go anywhere. He would have had to spend months or years fermenting a plot with other like-minded hardliners in the Kremlin, for which there is zero evidence beyond the sympathies of some he is assumed to command. Besides, his stated goal was to oust Shoigu and Russia’s chief of the general staff Valery Gerasimov, not to take power.

Even if his forces had made it to Moscow unscathed, and had somehow managed to “take” Moscow, and then “forced” Putin into a corner, all of which is highly unlikely, it’s totally unclear how all of this would make Putin sack Shoigu. Even if did, what then? Prigozhin goes home to bed and everyone lives happily ever after?

One scenario is that Prigozhin's march on Moscow could have triggered a real coup that did result in Putin deposed or dead, but if that had happened, as Prigozhin is not of the Kremlin, it very unlikely that he would have come out of that on top, although that is exactly the kind of chaos he flourishes in.

So given Prigozhin had no real game plan after he took Rostov he must have been happy to take a deal. Lukashenko has claimed that he was in talks with Prigozhin “all day” but more recent Russian reports say the talks were actually conducted with the FSB, and Lukashenko was brought in last minute to put a public face on them.

A couple of important points to note with the deal. First is that Prigozhin has still lost control of the Wagner forces in Ukraine, which will now pass to Shoigu. Nothing has changed there. Secondly, Prigozhin has also lost his influence with Putin so that is the end of his Kremlin-sponsored career. He has also been exiled to Africa, but it is not clear if he can go home to Russia. So what did he win? Unless there was some money involved – and he’d be crazy not to ask for a lot of money – he appears to be worse off than before.

His only hope of retaining some grace is to continue to play what the Kremlin finds a very useful role in propping up African regimes with his military services that earns the Kremlin valuable political capital in Africa. At least Prigozhin will have something to do.

Now the crisis is over and everyone is happy. The war can resume on Monday, a nasty resource-draining insurrection has been avoided, and Muscovites have even got an extra day off on Monday as a result of the fracas.

As for the long-term consequences, there is a torrent of commentary coming out now. Many are saying that there will be serious consequences. Many also expect Prigozhin to die very soon, and maybe he will if he doesn’t keep his mouth shut from this point on.

However, having lived there a long time my understanding of popular Russian culture is they see the antics in the Kremlin as something “those guys do, which is nothing to do with me.” People in power play their games, but the regular people just get on with their lives and leave them to it. It’s expected that if you have power you steal, but I just try and make a living. It’s expected that those in power jockey for position, but I just want to go on holiday in Turkey in August. No one really cares what happens to Prigozhin, even if they liked him, or if Putin won or lost, as bottom line he is still president.

In the old days there was a Russian saying that sums this up: “God’s too high and the Tsar is too far.” I don’t think anything has really changed since then.