In the immediate aftermath of a mutiny, Putin had a problem, which was that the Wagner fighters, who are some of the best fighters Russia has, were loyal to Prigosian.

Just killing Prigosian, the natural replacement for Prigosan and Wagner was Udkin.

By killing both of them meant that it's not just that Prigojan was publicly executed,

but that Wagner was decapitated.

And that was certainly one of the intents here.

We're up with a special episode of Call Me Back today. We'll be back in our

regular scheduled episode drop on Monday where we'll be having a discussion on the state of the presidential

race specifically after the Republican presidential debate on Wednesday night

but the reason we're dropping this special episode is because I was having a conversation with

Fred Kagan a frequent guest on this podcast for all things Russia Ukraine and I

figured rather than just having the conversation to check in with Fred, we should probably

record it and share it with our listeners.

Now why was I check in with Fred?

Well that should be obvious.

After the news of the death of Yevgeny Progosian, it seemed like a good time to check in about what the significance of that event

was and where we are overall in the Russia-Ukraine war. As our listeners know, Fred Kagan is the director of the Critical Threats Project,

the American Enterprise Institute.

He's also working closely with the Russia team at the Institute for the Study of War.

We'll post links to both organizations.

In the show notes, Fred is a former professor of military history at the U.S. Military Academy

at West Point, and he completed his PhD in Soviet and Russian military history at Yale

University.

...