The day after Yevgeny Prigozhin called off his “march of justice” on Moscow, neither President Putin nor Sergei Shoigu, his defence minister, appeared in public to reassure Russians that the crisis was over.
The Wagner boss had demanded that Shoigu and Valery Gerasimov, the chief of the general staff, be handed over to him after accusing them of ordering a strike on his forces in eastern Ukraine.
Rumours have circulated that Shoigu has been fired, or even detained, but the Kremlin says the deal brokered by Belarus did not touch on the fate of the defence minister. There is growing speculation, however, that Shoigu could be replaced by Alexei Dyumin, governor of the Tula region. He is a former defence official and was once the
