Putin may still be in power, but coups can have consequences even if they fail.

As Ivo Daalder, a former U.S. ambassador to NATO, noted on Twitter, a Soviet leader also faced down a coup effort only to be out of power months later. Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union before it broke apart, survived a coup attempt in August 1991. Just a few months later, Gorbachev resigned.

"Putin will likely survive, for now," Daalder wrote. "But the last 24 hours raise serious questions about his hold on power. Watch this space."

U.S. officials said Saturday that the administration would continue to monitor the situation in Russia, but they declined to comment on the apparent retreat of Wagner forces.

National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan canceled a pre-planned trip to Copenhagen Friday in light of the developing situation, said one official. Sullivan was supposed to go to Denmark to attend international talks about the war in Ukraine but participated virtually this morning instead, the official said.

Sullivan was at the White House earlier today for a briefing with Biden on Russia. He then traveled to Camp David with the president this afternoon.

After Prigozhin said he had ordered his forces to turn back, seemingly abandoning the armed rebellion, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., warned China that Russia was "significantly weaker & more vulnerable than ever."

"Beyond the impact on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine the biggest consequence of the last 24 hours is that China’s junior partner in their anti-U.S. coalition is significantly weaker & more vulnerable than ever," tweeted Rubio, the ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Russian and Chinese leaders signed a set of economic agreements in Beijing last month, despite disapproval from the West as the war in Ukraine dragged on.

The press office of Alexander Lukashenko, the president of Belarus, said Saturday that he helped broker a deal with Prigozhin to stop his march on Moscow.

The message, posted to Telegram and the president's official website, said that Lukashenko spoke with Putin and then held talks with Prigozhin. Moscow has not confirmed or commented on Lukashenko's involvement.

"Negotiations continued throughout the day. As a result, they came to agreements on the inadmissibility of unleashing a bloody massacre on the territory of Russia," the post said. "Yevgeny Prigozhin accepted the proposal of the President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko to stop the movement of armed persons of the Wagner company on the territory of Russia and take further steps to de-escalate tensions."

Lukashenko's press office also said that there was a proposal that would include promises for Wagner soldiers.

"At the moment, an absolutely profitable and acceptable option for solving the situation is on the table, with security guarantees for the Wagner PMC fighters," the post said.

KYIV, Ukraine — Russian President Vladimir Putin is a man with a strong sense of history, writes NBC News foreign correspondent Raf Sanchez. And his speeches are often laced with references to the past.

This morning before the stand-down, facing an armed rebellion by the Wagner mercenary group, Putin reached back over a century to find a historical parallel.

“The actions splitting our unity are a betrayal of our people,” he said. “It’s a stab in the back of our country and our people. It was such a blow that was dealt to Russia in 1917 when the country was fighting in World War I, but its victory was stolen.”

He was referring to the chaotic period during the Russian Revolution. The Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin, had seized control of Moscow but found themselves simultaneously fighting World War I against Germany and a bitter civil war against their fellow Russians.

Desperate to focus their forces on the fight inside Russia, the Bolsheviks agreed to a punishing treaty with Germany. They surrendered vast swaths of land — including much of Ukraine — in return for peace. 

His reference to such a bitter period of Russian history may give a sense of how deeply Putin fears the costs of internal division.

Dmitry Medvedev, the former Russian president and the deputy secretary of the country’s Security Council, condemned the incident as "a well-thought-out and planned operation, the purpose of which is to seize power in the country."

“Taking into account the high preparedness of the scheme, the professional coherence of actions, the high-quality control of the movement of troops, we can talk about the presence of a well-thought-out military plan and the participation in the rebellion of persons who previously served in the elite units of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, and quite possibly foreign specialists," Medvedev told the state media outlet RIA, according to a translation.

He warned of the threat of the mercenary group controlling the country's more than 4,000 nuclear warheads.

“In the history of mankind, there has never been such a thing that the largest arsenal of nuclear weapons was under the control of bandits. Such a crisis will obviously not be limited to one country. The world will be brought to the brink of destruction,” he said. “We will not let things go like this. No matter how much crazy criminals and their fans would like it.”

Medvedev earlier called for Russians to unite around Putin to “save” the country.

Retired CIA officer and former Texas congressman Will Hurd, who jumped into the presidential race on Thursday as a long-shot candidate for the Republican nomination, said in a series of tweets that the U.S. and its allies "should help Ukraine establish a no-fly zone right now to protect against the increasing instability of a Russian civil war."

"Ukraine is not a territorial dispute and Vladimir Putin is a war criminal. It shouldn’t be hard to admit this. Even the villainous Prigozhin knows this," Hurd said.

Before Putin's speech last night, Yevgeny Prigozhin, chief of the Wagner mercenary group, had been careful to say that he was leading his uprising against Russia's armed forces — but not against Putin himself, said Michael McFaul, former U.S. ambassador to Russia.

For a long time in the lengthy war in Ukraine, Prigozhin had been extremely bluntly, even crudely, critical of Russia's conventional armed forces — in particular, of Valery Gerasimov, the leader of Moscow’s military, and Minister of Defense Sergei Shoigu — accusing them of conducting the war very poorly and attacking members of the Warner group, McFaul told NBC News.

It appears Prigozhin had been planning this uprising for a long time because he wanted to overthrow the two generals, not the Putin regime, McFaul continued. It did not appear to be "an off the cuff decision made on a whim yesterday."

McFaul said the mercenaries "marched into Rostov-on-Don," a city in southern Russia, on Saturday morning with no resistance whatsoever," noting that they are well-equipped and well-armed.

Moments after McFaul spoke to NBC News, Prigozhin said Saturday that he was ordering his forces to turn back and return to their bases, seemingly abandoning the rebellion that was headed toward Moscow. 

In a video posted on Telegram, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called the armed rebellion "complete chaos," alleging that it shows "the masters of Russia do not control anything," according to a translation.

Zelenskyy urged more support for Ukraine, framing it as "support for your defense, everyone in the free world."

"Ukraine will definitely be able to protect Europe from any Russian forces — and it does not matter who commands them. We will protect," he said.

He castigated Putin as "the man from the Kremlin" and said he "is obviously very afraid and probably hiding somewhere, not showing himself. I am sure that he is no longer in Moscow."

Putin's spokesperson earlier told state news agency RIA that the president was working inside the Kremlin.

"He knows what he is afraid of, because he himself created this threat," Zelenskyy said of Putin. "All evil, all losses, all hatred — he spreads it himself. And the longer he can run between his bunkers, the more you will lose... you who connected with Russia."

"The longer your troops stay on Ukrainian soil, the more destruction they will bring to Russia. The longer this person is in the Kremlin, the more disasters there will be," he added.