good eveningmism i m anderson cooper in new york. this is special coverage of the extraordinary and still confusing events we have been reporting on for the past 24 hours out of russia and of what will be a critical day ahead for vladimir putin. what we witnessed over the last 24 hours appears to have been the most serious threat to putin s hold on power in decades. at this hour we know a lot, but it s important to point out there is a lot that is not known. for instance, what will be the fate of the man in the back seat of this suv, prigozhin, cheered by some as he appeared to be leaving the southern russian town, his mercenary force had just occupy. this video taken just hours after he called off his mercenaries from their push toward moscow and agreed to a deal brokered by russia s ally, belarus. translator: therefore realizing all the responsibility for the fact that russian blood will be shed from one of the sides, we turn our columns around and leave in the opposite d
people had anticipated in watching an armored column breaking through the checkpoints and coming closer than 200 miles to the capital city is something really spectacular. and then taking 1.2 million district without any resistance like a knife through butter is really something quite impressive in demonstrating the daring and also the power behind mr. prigozhin but also the incompetence of the security forces that were absolutely not prepared for that level of threat. and the way that the forces are tied up in the war in ukraine. general breedlove to alexander s point it is extraordinary given that we saw ukrainian backed russians make an incursion weeks ago across the border, and prigozhin made a
i think that it s very imaginable russian forces need to go through the people who took part in the mutiny and filter them and figure out who was really actively plotting that. i don t think that any force will now go back from their positions and defend the cities. i think that the force fighting in ukraine will remain in intact. but mr. putin will probably need to invest more resources in his counter intelligence and the political police, so the regime needs to become more brutal and more hands onto prevent situations like this from happening in the future. alexander gabuev, appreciate it, alexander breedlove as well. thank you so much. ahead we re going to continue to focus on what has occurred. just how the man once known s putin s chef became the person to put serious bruises on the russian leader s war in ukraine. a closer look at yevgeny prigozhin and what happens next