"Putin showed the entire world and the elite he is no one and not capable of doing anything," said one influential Moscow businessman. "It is a total collapse of his reputation."

"Games are being played that no one understands," said a Russian official close to top diplomatic circles. "Control of the country has been partly lost."

Members of the Moscow elite were grappling with how it had been possible for the renegade force of Wagner mercenaries to so easily seize control of the main command center for the Russian Army's war in Ukraine in the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don without facing resistance, and then progress hundreds of miles along the road to Moscow before Yevgeniy Prigozhin, the leader of the Wagner Group, eventually decided to turn his troops back.

"How is it possible for them to drive tanks hundreds of kilometers north toward Moscow and not be stopped?" said an associate of a Moscow billionaire. "There was no resistance."

"When you have columns of thousands of people marching and no one can stop it, the loss of control is evident," said one Russian billionaire who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity because of fears of retribution.