'Putin has never been so humiliated and weak': Russia experts say strongman president has been reduced to a bystander after begging Lukashenko to negotiate truce with Wagner leader Prigozhin:
Vladimir Putin has been significantly weakened by the notable mutiny of the Wagner mercenary group, experts say - although the militia leader announced on Saturday he had agreed to stop his march on Moscow and would go himself in Belarusian exile.
The Yevgeny Prigozhin uprising has been Putin's greatest challenge in his more than two decades in power.
He died on Saturday - but not before Prigozhin's men took the southern town of Rostov-on-Don and drove within 120 miles of Moscow.
Under the deal announced by Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, Prigozhin will travel to neighboring Belarus and drop charges of inciting an armed uprising.
The government has said it will not prosecute participating fighters either.
Prigozhin's decision to drop his challenge to Putin's rule remains a mystery, and speculation abounded on Saturday night as to why he had caved in and what prompted the violent and surreal uprising.
But although Putin appeared to have won that skirmish, Russian analysts said the 70-year-old, who has been president or prime minister since 1999, was injured in the battle.
Garry Kasparov, the world chess champion and later the top leader of Russia's democratic opposition, said Putin was "humiliated" by Prigozhin.
"The game ended with Putin's worst humiliation - a flight from Moscow when Prigozhin's army was hundreds of kilometers away," he told CNN.
According to Flight Radar, which tracks planes in real time, one of the many planes Putin uses for official visits took off from Moscow at 2:15 p.m. local time. Many have speculated that Putin fled Moscow for St. Petersburg, but Peskov, his spokesman, insisted he was "still working in the Kremlin."
Kasparov added: "Many of Putin's senior figures took cover." A dictator relies on his aura of invincibility.
Sergey Sanovich, a Hoover Fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution who specializes in disinformation and autocracies, said Putin has never appeared weaker.
He said it was a sign of his weakening that Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko had to negotiate with Prigozhin on his behalf.
"Prigozhin takes a bold step and gets away with it, possibly with more wins," Sanovich said.
“Lukashenko saves the day. Putin becomes a bystander who complains on TV and leaves his top generals to be humiliated.
"Never in a quarter of a century has Putin looked so ineffective and unhappy."
Sanovich's view of Lukashenko's involvement was shared by Michael McFaul, Barack Obama's Russia adviser from 2009 to 2011 and later US ambassador to Moscow.
McFaul tweeted, "Putin couldn't control a mercenary force he created and led by his pal." He had to rely, of all things, on Lukashenko to negotiate a deal with a man he had called a traitor just hours before
"These are signs of real weakness, not strength."
He added: “What weakened Putin's rise to power? His disastrous war in Ukraine.
"The longer the war lasts, the weaker Putin's regime becomes."
"Those who want to prevent the collapse of the Russian state (eg Xi) should urge Putin to end his war."
Another high-profile critic, Mikhail Khodorkovsky – once Russia's wealthiest man who became a leading opposition figure in exile after Putin imprisoned him for 10 years – said he believes that Putin's judgment was clouded.
