I suppose Putin is calculating whether giving violent and unscrupulous criminals other than himself their own army might come with risks.

Prigozhin has said the unspeakable out loud: that Putin and Russia’s military launched a pointless war, ran it incompetently, and killed tens of thousands, motivated by their own greed and lust for empire and looting. “Evil brought by the military leadership of the country must be stopped,” Prigozhin said. (He stopped short of noting the killing of innocent Ukrainians, including thousands of non-combatants, presumably because he’s fine with that.)

Prigozhin's mercenary army is itself one of the most murderous and brutal forces in the world. He and his men are cynical, motivated by money and self-interest. They aren’t Christian, and they don’t care about Peter the Great. And yet he is one of Russia’s most popular figures. Decades of tyranny, suppression, gulags, and corruption has brutalised Russia in the true sense of the word: to be made brutal. The gangster state makes citizens cynical and apathetic, because caring is pointless, so gangsterism flowers like mould in a petri dish, a virus on a cruise ship.

Josie's stuff column , including the Russian foreign affairs ministry's social media responses to her, is here.