Wagner mercenaries face no legal punishment for their short-lived ‘mutiny’ (Picture: AP/EPA)

Vladimir Putin’s strongman image has been shattered by the humiliating climbdown he took to defuse an ‘armed mutiny’ this weekend.

The Russian president dropped charges against Yevgeny Prigozhin and his 25,000 Wagner mercenaries just hours after accusing them of ‘treason’ for storming the city of Rostov-on-Don and marching toward Moscow.

Instead of life in jail, Prigozhin has been exiled to Belarus, and it’s thought his guns-for-hire will be absorbed into Russia’s regular armed forces.

Putin’s spokesperson admitted the confrontation had become so ‘unpredictable’ that the need to ‘avoid bloodshed’ trumped revenge.

Officials in Belarus – Russia’s closest ally – accused their neighbours of handing ‘a gift to the collective West’.

‘Putin has been diminished for all time by this affair’, a former US ambassador to the Ukraine said on Sunday.

An ex-MI6 spy said the 70-year-old ‘has lost authority and legitimacy within Russia’ even though ‘he’s managed to worm his way out of it for the present’.

Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin has been invited to ‘retire’ in Belarus (Picture: AP)

He had threatened to march on Moscow with his 25,000-strong force (Picture: AFP)

Christopher Steele told Sky News’ Sophy Ridge On Sunday programme: ‘To see events unfold in Russia yesterday and the speed with which the situation seemed to spiral out of control must be very concerning for Putin and the people around him.’

Western diplomats have largely avoided celebrating the saga publicly, with UK and EU officials playing it down as an ‘internal matter’ – but some of Ukraine’s allies could barely contain their excitement.

Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis said Moscow’s ‘brutal banditocracy’ had suffered a ‘chaotic implosion’, adding: ‘We are not distracted.

‘We see clearly in the chaos. The goal, as ever, is victory and justice for Ukraine. The time is now.’

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, said ‘the aggression against Ukraine is causing instability also within Russia’.

Latvia and Estonia, two other EU states who share borders with Russia, said they had strengthened border security, with Latvia vowing to deny entry to any Russians fleeing ‘due to current events’.

Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has refused to sanction the Kremlin over the Ukraine invasion, said the situation ‘underlined the importance of acting with common sense’.

Putin’s other allies have mostly stayed at arm’s length, with Iran and Kazakhstan underlining their support of the ‘rule of law’ in Russia.

Kremlin’s most powerful ally, China, has yet to field a single official statement, though reports suggest state censors have stifled coverage of Wagner’s uprising.

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The Russian president has dropped charges against 25,000 mercenaries in exchange for calling off their ‘mutiny’.