A Mutiny That Showed the Stress on Putin’s System of Rule

But that may not be possible in this case, Dr. de Bruin said. Because Mr. Prigozhin withdrew, rather than being defeated by Russia’s army, “Putin doesn’t come out of this looking like he won the confrontation,” she said. The public saw that Wagner troops could race toward Moscow, and that they now seem to face little punishment.

Even if there was more going on behind the scenes, appearances matter. After making a brief statement on Saturday, Mr. Putin vanished from sight, making no further appearances during the dramatic uprising and its aftermath. Then his government announced a deal with Mr. Prigozhin, even though the president had publicly called Mr. Prigozhin’s actions “traitorous.”

Mr. Putin’s response, analysts said, may signal that disloyalty is not as costly as many might have imagined. In brief remarks on Monday, Mr. Putin claimed that he had been active behind the scenes, and that even the mutinous fighters realized their efforts were doomed.

“From the very beginning of the events, on my direct instructions, steps were taken to avoid a lot of bloodshed,” he said. “This took time, including to give those who made a mistake a chance to change their minds.”

The remarks, delivered after 10 p.m. in Moscow, may have been an attempt to project an image of unity and strength. And though Mr. Prigozhin is an “exceptional phenomenon” and isolated among Russia’s elites, according to Tatiana Stanovaya, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, he still dealt Mr. Putin a blow, she wrote over the weekend. “I won’t discount the possibility of future imitators, but there will never be another one like him.”

None of that means that Mr. Putin’s days as president are numbered. But his hold on power looks less certain than ever before. Mr. Putin “is now marked as weak enough to challenge,” said Naunihal Singh, a professor at the Naval War College and the author of a book on the strategic logic of military coups. “I think there may be other challengers now.”