There’s no doubt that Yevgeny Prigozhin’s death, which has understandably dominated headlines this week, throws up a lot of questions.

As Jeremy Morris points out in his openDemocracy piece this week, the big one is how such a visibly violent demise pushes development within Russia itself. And what of the future of Prigozhin’s most noted achievement, the diffuse but permeating Wagner group of mercenaries, active in so many countries in Africa as well as Ukraine over the past year?

In the short term, much power has been hoovered up by Putin’s defence minister, that skilful and persistent survivor, Sergey Shoigu. A possible key figure as the dust settles is the defence ministry’s first deputy minister, Ruslan Tsalikov, who previously had links with Prigozhin but also “happens to figure prominently in Shoigu’s own empire”.

Much will depend on whether Putin’s brutal consolidation of power works out and this relates to the extent of his popularity in Russia. What is clear, so far, is that his determination to exercise control is popular for the many Russian oligarchs, let alone the many who fear state-wide disorder bordering on anarchy. This applies especially to those over 50 who remember all too clearly the chaos and economic collapse of the 1990s in the wake of the uncontrolled embrace of turbo-capitalism that Putin eventually reigned in after 1999.

Anatol Lieven points out a further factor. What matters to so many in Moscow and beyond, is the thought of defeat by NATO. Whatever the opinion of Putin and his policies and whether or not the “special military operation” has turned into a disaster, the humiliation of Russia, for the second time in 40 years, is not to be considered.

Putin has been particularly clever in developing the narrative of the threat from NATO dating right back to the early 1950s, seeing the encroachment from the west towards Russia as the real danger, whatever the reality. The latest gloss on this is the emphasis that Volodymyr Zelenskyi places on the introduction of the F-16 multi-role warplane in the coming months. This has been a key part of NATO’s aviation backbone and it is all too easy to present those planes as NATO warplanes, albeit in Ukrainian colours.

That brings us back, in turn to the state of the war itself, starting with an update on the “winners and losers” followed by the most likely developments as autumn and winter approach. Those winners and losers are still, respectively, the military-industrial corporations, especially but not only in the West, and ordinary people.

For the former war really is turning out to be Christmas come early and with no expectations of a hangover to follow. Across the world military spending is already operating from a substantial base – a global spend now exceeding US$2 trillion a year. In a single year, the year the war started, military budgets across Europe surged by around 13 percent and world-wide the increase was 3.7 percent.

Western arms corporations are reporting full order books and have seen sharp increases in their share prices. One of the biggest, the UK-based BAE Systems, saw its share price go up 70 percent from before the conflict, and for the Swedish Saab it was even more, a doubling over the same period. Germany’s largest armourer, Rheinmetall, has products much in demand, including armoured personnel carriers, many types of military trucks, light tanks anti-tank guided missiles, self-propelled howitzers and guns for both the German Leopard and US Abrams main battle tanks. It saw its share price treble in a year. War is indeed very good for business.

What of the losers? Eighteen months into the Russian attempt to integrate Ukraine into the new expanded Russia, what have been the costs so far? A US government assessment two weeks ago put the total number of people killed or injured at half a million. For the Russians it was 120,000 dead and 170-180,000 injured and for the Ukrainians it was close to 70,000 killed and 100-120,000 injured. The Ukrainian deaths already exceed all the US combat deaths for eleven years of the Vietnam War.

In the war itself, Ukraine has made some gains in the south-east but Russia is reported to be gathering a force of up to 100,000 for an operation in the north-east. It is always possible that one side might suddenly collapse, but NATO cannot allow that to be Ukraine and failure is considered unthinkable in Moscow, so any way of avoiding that will be legitimate.

For the present, a telling trend is the much-increased use of armed drones, with thousands now being produced and used. The impact of these might be in its early days but it is worth recalling a precedent from the 1980s. When Saddam Hussein’s Iraq attacked Iran at the start of the war it was expected that the weakened and chaotic post-revolutionary Iran would collapse. That did not happen, so in early 1984 Iraq started bombarding Iranian cities with missiles, strike aircraft and even long-range artillery. Caught out, Tehran eventually acquired some old Soviet Scud-B missiles from Russia and Libya and also began to develop its own missiles. This was the start of the infamous “war of the cities”.

Over the following three years Iran suffered the most, with thousands of people killed or injured, but 40 years later the substantial Iranian missile industry causes the Americans and Israelis, not forgetting Saudi Arabia, great concern.

Armed drones have been in use for two decades but that use has been greatly boosted by the Ukraine conflict, and where that leads is difficult to predict – yet one more reason why a negotiated end to the conflict is so important.