I’D WONDERED THIS MYSELF: After Prigozhin humiliated Putin, the question was how he survived so long.

“The very fact that Prigozhin existed after the coup completely upended our understanding of the Putin regime,” said Abbas Galyamov, a political consultant and former Putin speechwriter. “The rule was that you can’t go against Putin. For two months, everything was upside down. Prigozhin created a massive problem for Putin, he humiliated him.”

In the two months after the mutiny, Prigozhin appeared down but not out. He was filmed in Belarus telling his mercenaries that the conduct of the war in Ukraine was a “disgrace”. He was photographed on the sidelines of a Russia-Africa summit, and then appeared this week armed and in camouflage somewhere in Africa, saying he was “making Russia even greater on all continents”.

Perhaps more importantly, he was never served with criminal charges after the mutiny. His companies continued to win multimillion-dollar catering contracts, and he continued to travel between Africa, Belarus and Russia on his Embraer jet until it crashed on Wednesday.

“It gave the signal that it was permissible to go against Putin and everything will be OK,” Galyamov said.

Many had the sense that this would not last. The CIA director, William Burns, last month called Putin an “apostle of payback” and warned Prigozhin not to fire his food taster.

Somehow, Prigozhin spent his time in Belarus (which is basically a Russian vassal) and sometimes even safely traveling back to Russia… up until he didn’t.