Again liberal leaning to see strings pulled.
Another scenario: mercenary life.
Mercenary life has its perks: wet work (including rape, murder, torture...)usually outsourced by regular forces in an attempt to avoid tainting regular troops reputation.
Mercenary life has its drawbacks: mercenaries are expendable, more than regular soldiers and often used to decrease the risks of mutiny among regular troops.
While liberals usually deploy mercenary troops for the first factor, Russia deploys them for both.
Situation of this war: none of the countries has an economy of war, which means that supply of military consumables is lacking. Shortage is a daily fact.
The mercenary troop comes at the bottom of the distribution of consumables even though the troop is asked to spearhead the war effort.
Mutiny happens in mercenary troops and may mean a bullet in the head for the mercenary leader.
This guy's life was endangered by his own soldiers.
He also complained about the situation to the russian military. Russian hierarchy that is not unproficient but face a shortage situation and ease the pressure off it by shedding the burden on mercenaries.
The mercenary leader outbursts were necessary for him to buy time against his own troops. He appeared as someone doing something.
The antics though gained him enemies among russian regular troops, which endangered his life.
This guy never wanted to make a coup. He wanted an exit door for himself.
With the walk to Moscow, a bargain was set: the life vs an exile and the mercenary troops.
Putin did not want to destroy the mercenary group as it would cripple the war effort and would not be against an exile.
So now the guy is in exile, his life is safer, his troops are going to pay the price by becoming even more expendable. Putin may even play the rebranding trick used by liberals.
The mercenary group is tagged as terrorist, dissolution of the group and rebranded as another one (same guys involved, same mindset), new mercenary troop without a terrorist label.