Wagner MFWIC (perhaps ex-MFWIC) Yevgeny Prigozhin now claims his move through Rostov-on-Don, then up the M4 highway through Voronezh on the way to Moscow, was not an attempt to overthrow the Russian government, or even the Russian Defense establishment. (Note: the cite actually is a Moscow Times reprint of an AFP article.)
We went to demonstrate our protest and not to overthrow power in the country[.]
The move, which involved attacks on the Wagner units by Russian army and air force units and Wagner shootdowns of a number of helicopters and a command and control airplane, was the Russian iteration of a mostly peaceful protest.
[T]he [Russian] Ministry of Defense said that the Wagner paramilitary group that launched a mutiny last week was preparing to hand over its heavy weapons[.]
It’s not necessarily an open question, then: the move to separate Wagner from its heavy weapons suggests the Russian government has made up its mind on how much protest, peaceful or otherwise, was involved in the matter.