The Kremlin is trying to humiliate Prigozhin

When corrupt Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych was toppled in 2014, his private estate at Mezhyhirya turned out to contain an ostrich farm, chandeliers worth thousands and and a two-kilo gold loaf of bread. When Wagner mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin’s St Petersburg estate was raided, investigators found cash, guns – and a bizarre collection of wigs. But what does the eager ‘through the keyhole’ leak of footage from the raid tell us about the state of play in the Putin-Prigozhin grudge match?

Prigozhin himself is still at large. Although we were told the deal was for him to go into exile in neighbouring Belarus, its president, Alexander Lukashenko, has said that Prigozhin is in Russia, but he doesn’t know where. Indeed, Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov made the implausible claim that the Russian state has ‘neither the ability, nor the desire’ to track Prigozhin’s movements.