and mercs are generally a bad idea unless you run them…

Well the entire affair is basically a Prigozin response to Russia wanting to run them closer so they do know that. Interestingly enough his gamble was apparently to check if Russian government is really as weak as western and UA media says and the support in army is crumbling. It turned out that propaganda is wishful thinking and nobody outside Wagner Group supported the endeavour and afaik even a lot of Wagner personnel said they didn't sign up for that.

But, neither side could just admit they were in wrong so that's why Lukashenko proposal came in and now they can just talk and resolve it one way or another.