THE TIME OF TROUBLES: Russian state media reported today that the investigation into YevgenyPrigozhin’s brief rebellion has been dropped and that Prigozhin’s Wagner Group private army is beginning to hand over its military equipment.

  President Vladimir Putin and Prigozhin issued conflicting stories yesterday about the weekend revolt, but Putin’s angry statement is the one that holds sway. He called it a mutiny led by traitors who betrayed their country.

  Prigozhin claimed he never intended to topple the government, that his march toward Moscow on Saturday was a protest against the Ministry of Defense attempt to absorb the Wagner Group into the regular army. The last straw was a Russian missile attack on a Wagner encampment that killed 30 men.

  But without naming the mercenary leader, Putin said, “They wanted Russians to fight each other.” Insulting both Prigozhin’s private army and Ukraine’s defenders, Putin said, “They rubbed their hands, dreaming of taking revenge for their failures at the front and during the so-called counteroffensive.” But, he said, “they miscalculated.” 

  Putin claimed that constitutional rule prevailed, even though he runs a dictatorship.

  Prigozhin appears to have negotiated with Putin and accepted exile to Belarus after Russian army units declined to join his uprising. In fact, about a dozen Russian soldiers were killed. It’s hard to believe that after calling Prigozhin’s march on Moscow “traitorous” that Putin will leave it at that.

THE WAR ROOM: Russia’s political turmoil has potential to affect events at the Ukraine front, but how will have to play out.

  Prigozhin’s Wagner Group provided the most ferocious fighters. Russian soldiers have been reluctant warriors and Ukraine’s counter offensive has been probing for weak spots, taking admittedly small chunks of ground. Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar said Ukrainian forces have re-taken just about 50 square miles in the country’s south. 

  The Wagner Group has won some of Russia’s only military success since the first weeks of invasion.  They took the city of Bakhmut this spring at great cost in lives. Putin yesterday suggested that Wagner fighters who do not want to join the Russian military by July 1^st, as required, might want to move to Belarus along with the exiled Prigozhin. At the least, that breaks up or dissolves Russia’s best fighting unit. 

  But it’s unknown exactly where Prigozhin went, or what he intends for his army. The Russian news outlet Verstka reported that a Wagner base for 8,000 soldiers was being built in Belarus, southeast of Minsk. 

THE SUPREMES: The Supreme Court is expected this week to issue its final decisions of the term, including opinions on affirmative action in higher education, President Biden’s plan to forgive more than $400 billion of student debt, and the civil rights of same-sex couples.

  The Court yesterday allowed the Louisiana congressional map to be redrawn to add another majority-Black district. The Court lifted affirmed a lower court’s order for the state legislature to amend is redistricting.

  The Court also voted to preserve a lower court opinion that threw out the code of conduct at a North Carolina publicly funded charter school that required girls to wear skirts in order to “preserve chivalry” based on the belief that every girl is a “fragile vessel.” Now they can wear pants.

ORANGE ALERT: CNN has obtained a copy of the recording in which former President Donald Trump purportedly shows classified documents to people in his office. In the recording in which he’s talking about a secret plan to attack Iran, Trump says “these are the papers” calling them “highly confidential.”

  A transcript was previously released, but the actual audio is more shocking. You can hear Trump sycophants laughing.

  The recording is likely to be used in the federal criminal case in which Trump is charged with possessing and mishandling classified documents. After the initial news that the recording existed, Trump said on Fox News, “I didn’t have a document, per se. There was nothing to declassify. These were newspaper stories, magazine stories and articles.” But Trump’s own words on the recording suggest that he had secret documents in hand.

Murder Mystery: Police have arrested a 41-year-old man in the murders of three people in a home in a neighborhood of Newton, Massachusetts outside Boston where this kind of thing just doesn’t happen. Police said there were signs of forced entry in the basement.

  The victims — 73, 74, and 97 years old — were killed by stabbing and blunt force trauma. The younger two were  celebrating  their 50^th wedding anniversary. 

THE OBIT PAGE: Richard Ravitch, the politically savvy developer and public-minded citizen who helped rescue New York City from bankruptcy and saved the deteriorating subway system from fiscal collapse, died Sunday in Manhattan 89.

  For a man never elected to office, Ravitch had outsized influence for the good. He also served as New York’s lieutenant governor, drafted by David Paterson in 2009 after Gov. Eliot Spitzer resigned in disgrace amidst a prostitution scandal.

THE SPIN RACK: The 23-year-old who killed five people and wounded 25 at Club Q in Colorado Springs pleaded guilty yesterday and was given multiple life sentences.   Anderson Lee Aldrich, who identifies as sexually non-binary, shot up the LGBTQ club last November. — Congestion pricing for driving in the busiest part of Manhattan has cleared federal approval. New York is now set to charge drivers a fee on Manhattan streets south of 60^th, one of the world’s most traffic-clogged commercial districts. — Prosecutors in Idaho say they will seek the death penalty for Bryan Kohberger, the man accused of the bloody murders of four University of Idaho students in an off-campus house. — Fox News has given the 8pm slot vacated by Tucker Carlson to Jesse Waters, who to our knowledge has never said anything interesting.

BELOW THE FOLD: The admittedly rotund former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie responded to Donald Trump making fun of his weight asking, “Oh what, like he’s some Adonis?”

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