Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin may still be buddies, but don’t look for China to be taking any advice from Putin these days.

Especially when it comes to invading another country.

Because what happened to Putin and Russia as a result of his ill-advised and botched invasion of Ukraine could happen to Xi Jinping and China who are intent on taking over Taiwan.

Such an invasion could blow up in Xi’s face, the way the Ukraine has blown up in Putin’s, especially if Xi has a Yevgeny Prigozhin or two secreted somewhere in the vast Communist bureaucracy.

Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.

Prigozhin, of course, is the ruthless head of the equally ruthless mercenary Wagner Group, who sought to turn on Putin in an astounding political development, that included an abated march on Moscow.

Prigozhin, fighting the Ukrainians as well as Putin’s top generals, denied he had launched a military coup against his old friend and mentor Putin “This is not a military coup, but a march of justice.”

Putin did not see it that way. He militarized Moscow, turning it into an armed camp, and called Prigozhin a traitor.

Putin, who faced his first crisis since assuming power 20 years ago, may have been shaken by Prigozhin’s revolt, but he was still strong — and cunning — enough to thwart it.

The incident was a major international embarrassment to Putin, whose Ukraine debacle has turned into his personal and unwinnable Vietnam. He has lost face, to be sure, but he still has two faces to work with.

And there is no one in Russia strong — or crazy — enough to topple him.

If Prigozhin with an army of 25,000 inside Russia or in the Ukraine could not do it, nobody can, despite wishful thinking.

Besides, Prigozhin was not initially opposed to Putin’s war in Ukraine. War is his business.

But he was very critical and outspoken about the way the war was being conducted by Putin’s top military chiefs, particularly Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu.

With the intervention of Belarus Communist dictator Alexander Lukashenko, a deal was apparently worked out to send Prigozhin to Belarus, which beats Siberia, even in this era of global warming.

Minsk is no Moscow but it apparently will have to do, unless Prigozhin should happen to fall out of the window of the Minsk Marriott, or commits suicide by shooting himself in the head three or four times, as other Putin opponents have done

Treason charges against him will be dropped, as well as charges against his army who participated in the revolt. They also will be integrated into the regular Russian army, or risk being sent back to prison, where many of them came from in the first place.

The bottom line to all of this is that there is no bottom line. Nobody knows what will happen next, despite belated US military intelligence reports that they could see the Russian revolt coming. If they did, they never told anyone about it, until after it happened.

Keep in mind that it was Gen. Mark Milley, the outgoing chairman of the Joint Chiefs of staff, who, upon the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, predicted Kiev would fall in 72 hours.

Putin, as tough as they come, will probably survive even if his war in Ukraine goes sideways.

Still, the Chinese must be having second thoughts about partnering with Putin.

In March Xi Jinping held a much-publicized three-day meeting with Putin in Moscow in which they talked about replacing the United States and establishing a new world order.

Following a lavish, un-Communist-like state dinner, Xi said, “Right now there are changes, the likes we have not seen in one hundred years. And we are driving those changes together.”

How’s that working out?

Peter Lucas is a veteran Massachusetts political reporter and columnist.