Sources of British special services have reported that the Russian secret services threatened to hurt the families of chiefs of the Wagner Private Military Company (PMC) before Yevgeny Prigozhin, the owner and leader of the Wagner PMC, stopped his offensive on Moscow.
I think it makes sense if it’s the only thing they could do to him. Like, the threat against their families has the problem of “and then what”. The secret services can only carry it out once, and once its been carried out there’s still the issue of 25,000 war-criming mercenaries who are now super pissed off and have nothing left to lose. This deal makes a lot of sense when you consider that no one can actually do anything to Prigozhin that can actually physically stop him, the most they can do is to lean on his officers, and only if they never actually try to carry out any of their threats.
I think that the reason that Wagner rebelled now is because Russia was planning something with a nuclear power plant that would have put them up against NATO, in addition to making them part of the regular army. It was Moscow or fighting NATO and Prigozhin probably thought his chances were better in Moscow.
Everyone keeps talking Putin up like a genius, but they’ve been saying that since this invasion started and it seems progressively more unlikely. I think this is just what it looks like, a rebellion that was stopped by a last minute hail-mary. Because even if it was a secret plan to flush out traitors, Prigozhin still made Putin look weak, and a strong-man dictator can never afford to look weak. That means that even if it is a plan and it worked perfectly, Putin is still highly motivated to have Prigozhin killed. Prigozhin has to know this. I can’t imagine he’d agree to this plan.