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In general, I think far too little credence is given to what one might call the "retardation hypothesis", namely that a lot of powerful people are kind of stupid, or at least - if they are intelligent - also impulsive, prone to anger and lack of self-control and often unwilling to consider the advice of smart people around them.
I don't think Prigozhin's run to Moscow was a psy-op or 5D chess. At the same time, I also think it was never likely that the few thousand fighters that made it to Moscow would be able to make a play for the whole country. He lacks the regional powerbase, lacks the ideological column, lacks the administrative expertise, much of the public still has some degree of fondness for Putin, and the estimated 50,000 strong FSO, plus the air force, plus large remaining portions of the military appeared to stay loyal to Putin. It was not a 1917 situation, and nor was it a present-day Sudan situation where the rebel/mercenary army was much better funded and much larger relative to the official military.
Assuming I'm right that it isn't 5D chess, I think Prigozhin's initial gambit was to occupy Rostov-on-Don as a 'protest', win some major concessions from Putin (maybe firing Shoigu, giving Prigozhin more of what he wanted, maybe money, whatever) over the phone immediately, then go back to Ukraine. Instead, something seems to have gone wrong, maybe Putin played hardball, and some portion of Prigozhin's forces decided to march on Moscow. This caused some degree of panic. Putin eventually semi-relented and here we are.
It's obvious why Prigozhin accepted the deal: he never actually wanted to die, he wanted concessions. Marching on Moscow forreal forreal, to borrow from the zoomers, would have been certain death for him and the men he might care about (eg. senior Wagner officers). He couldn't escape to the West or any Western-friendly country because he'd be extradited to the Hague for war crimes. He's too hot for the Arabs to accept him now, and neither them nor the Iranians want to annoy Putin. A Prigozhin that was Putin's enemy would be stranded with nowhere to go, wanted by both Russia and the 'West'.
Taking Lukashenko's deal (which Putin might have put him up to) was Prigozhin's only option by Saturday evening. As to why he attempted the move in the first place, I think a combination of impulsive rage and a desire to show Putin he was serious explain it pretty easily. Putin called Prigozhin's bluff and - at great cost, I'd argue, but nevertheless - he won.
I'd normally be behind this, but I think this undersells a bunch of things. Like how stable or sensible things are in a cutthroat oligarchy in the middle of a war that threatens to drag many of them down.
This isn't some country ruled by common law pedantry with six million precedents and the comfort of a stable constitutional settlement. You can have "experts" in the former you can just offload most things to. This is the late Republican trap: there is no easy guarantee of safety in the game and the "smart people" don't necessarily have the same skin in the game (or anything to offer you). Caesar would have been an idiot to stay in his camp and trusting in the Republic's processes, even though we certainly would have called him an idiot for marching and losing.
In this situation Prigozhin was seeing himself lose a battle for internal influence and what made him valuable to his feudal leader had basically been burned taking Bakhmut for some reason that the more militarily inclined might know but I certainly don't. His men were going to be signed with the government and his men are his power. What future he would have had is unclear in a place you really don't want to be in a gray zone in.
It's a situation that provides a rational incentive for "dumb" behavior
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Generally, it aligns with what is known
https://meduza.io/en/feature/2023/06/25/putin-was-nowhere-to-be-found
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To be charitable, I think acting irrational is often the most rational course of action. The whole point of anger is that you're willing to engage in mutually destructive behavior, to your own detriment, if you feel slighted. This ideally works as a deterrent against being taken advantage of too much.
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I am sympathetic to this hypothesis, God knows that centuries of fetal alcohol syndrome can't have done good things for the average Russian warlord.
I'm still surprised that Lukashenko had that much autonomy, and even if Putin put him up to it, that still reflects poorly on Putin's control. Sure, it could have been the least bad decision he had available.
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