Wagner group Mercenary operation will now struggle to survive

In the aftermath of Yevgeny Prigozhin's "march on Moscow" two months ago, the CIA chief, William Burns, predicted that Vladimir Putin would take his time exacting his revenge.

- Peter Beaumont

"What we are seeing is a very complicated dance," Burns suggested at the Aspen Security Forum in July. "Putin is the ultimate apostle of payback."

And while details of exactly what occurred remain murky in the immediate aftermath of the mercenary boss's reported death in a plane crash, what is clear is that Wagner - the mercenary organisation that Prigozhin builthas essentially been first quartered and then dramatically decapitated.

With Wagner's prominent role in Ukraine already heavily curtailed in the aftermath of his march on Moscow, which embarrassed Putin and the Kremlin, it had seemed - if only for a moment - that Prigozhin was trying to claw back some of the influence he had acquired through his operation in Africa at the Kremlin's behest.