THE TIME OF TROUBLES: The world is wondering “what next?” after Russia stepped back from civil war over the weekend.

  Yevgeny Prigozhin’s mercenaries were 125 miles from Moscow and barely opposed by regular forces when he struck a deal to turn around, avoid arrest, and leave for exile in Belarus. His troops are now invited to join the Russian army.

  It is a strangely quick and forgiving deal with a lot that needs explaining. Russian President Vladimir Putin has not been publicly seen nor heard from since Saturday.

  Prigozhin has been loudmouthed for months about his unhappiness with how the burden of the Ukraine war has fallen on the lower classes, saying that if the poor keep receiving their children in zinc coffins while the progeny of the elite “shook their arses” in the sun, it could end like the 1917 revolution.

  He’s not against the war. He’s angry that the regular Russian army is corrupt and incompetent, unable to defeat Ukraine. If Prigozhin had toppled President Vladimir Putin, the war could have become much worse. He once said that if Putin wanted to conquer Europe, “If we have to reach the English Channel, then I have his ideal plan.”

  Putin’s failure to occupy Ukraine has proved that he’s not all powerful. In a twist on Shakespeare, if you let slip the dogs of war, they might turn and bite you. All kinds of analysts and experts say Prigozhin’s 36-hour revolt has weakened Putin’s hold of the country, but he’s still in charge. You have to wonder what he’ll do to demonstrate that he’s still the unopposed boss in Moscow.

  In the immediate term, it looks like the 25,000-man Wagner Group private army might be disbanded, removing one of the most ferocious and effective fighting units facing the Ukrainians as they press their counter offensive. Spreading Wagner’s killers through the Russian army might even cause more disarray in the ranks.

  Whatever happened between Prigozhin and Putin, it can’t possibly be over. People are going to disappear or fall out of windows in the tallest hotels. 

  The situation recalls what’s known as the Time of Troubles in Russian history, a 15-year period of rebellion and blood around 1600. A little like Prigozhin, the Cossack leader Stenka Razin led a revolt against the rich Russian aristocracy, the boyars, while claiming loyalty to the Czar. What Russians did to each other in those years is not breakfast reading, but it provides historical background to the country’s history of brutality and internal revolt.

  Stenka Razin, the Yevgeny Prigozhin of his time, was ultimately captured and hacked apart while still alive. Maybe Prigozhin brushed up on his history before agreeing to leave for Belarus.

SCHOLARLY DEBATE: Attorney John Eastman, who fought alongside Donald Trump to overturn the 2020 presidential election, is on trial defending his law license against charges that he knowingly and willfully pushed false and outlandish allegations of voter fraud in the 2020 election, and more importantly, promoted an “unlawful” scheme to overturn the election results.  Eastman has a PhD in government and is a former dean of the law school at Chapman University. He took part in the scheme to send alternate slates of pro-Trump electors to Congress and was one of the people who pressured then Vice President Mike Pence to refuse certification of the vote.  

  Eastman’s lawyer, Randy Miller, said in his opening statement that his client’s legal theories were “tenable,” and that the vice president’s ability to intervene in the Electoral College count was a matter of “scholarly debate.” There’s nothing in the Constitution that says states can replace the electors when they don’t like the election results.

  Eastman intends to call as witnesses some of the more prominent election deniers, including Mark Finchem, an Arizona politician and member of the Oath Keepers militia, who lost his run for Arizona secretary of state.  He wears a cowboy hat.

ORANGE ALERT: Speaking to the Faith and Freedom Coalition gala in Washington Saturday night, Donald Trump made the Christlike claim that he is being indicted for his followers and that he considers each new indictment against him a “badge of honor.”

  “I’m being indicted for you and I believe that ‘you’ is more than 200 million people who love our country,” the former president said to an applauding audience. “This is a continuation of the greatest witch hunt of all time.”

  Trump has big legal troubles and The NY Times reports that he has begun diverting more of the money he’s raising for a presidential comeback into a political action committee that he uses to pay his personal legal fees. The paper says that 10 percent of Trump’s political donations are going to his Save America fund, which pays his burgeoning legal fees in the millions of dollars.

THE SPIN RACK: Hikers in the San Bernardino mountains of California have found the remains of what is believed to be the missing actor, Julian Sands. The British actor who appeared in “Room With a View,” “Warlock” and “The Killing Fields” went missing in the snowy mountains on January 13^th. — A bridge across the Yellowstone River in Montana collapsed early Saturday, causing

train cars carrying hot asphalt and molten sulfur to plunge into the water. At least one tank car appeared to be leaking a a yellow substance. — The Coast Guard has opened an investigation into the implosion that killed five people aboard the Titan submersible. The findings could lead to new regulations on deep-sea vehicles and even criminal charges. 

BELOW THE FOLD: New York City is known for its wood-fired pizza. But the city is writing rules aimed at cutting smoky exhaust by 75 percent. The New York City Department of Environmental Protection is writing rules that would require as many as 100 pizza joints to install exhaust scrubbers at a cost of tens of thousands of dollars. The regulators are  probably the people who eat pizza with a knife and fork.

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