prosecution and also given everyone within wagner until this weekend a deadline to make a choice. go to belarus with prigozhin, sign a military contract or go home. so, by this weekend, prigozhin will know if his fighters stayed loyal to him or if they ve seen the writing on the wall and chosen the russian state. and if you re lukashenko, you re looking good right now because you ve been given the credit for having negotiated this deal. but suddenly you face the prospect of thousands of these absolute cut throats being sent off to your country. they become your responsibility. that s right. i wouldn t want to be in that position. or the country s neighboring them. i ll get yelled at, steve, real quick before we go, what are you watching in the next day or two or four ahead that we should key on? i a i agree with bobby. you have to see what will happen to the inner circle here. is anybody going to make a move? there s nothing but damage control going on. looking very bad to th
leaders there were about the situation. he also said that he had put the forces of belarus on to combat readiness. they were extremely concerned about the situation, poppy. it really does. fred pleitgen, thank you for that analysis and reporting. here with us now to discuss, kim dozier, bobby gauche and former cia chief of russia operations, steve hall. steve, i want to start with you. what exactly is president putin thanking his armed forces for doing over the course of the weekend? this is less about what he s saying. it s more about damage control and who he is saying it to and why. so first of all, this is sort of the failure of dictatorship 101. you shouldn t have to do damage control if you re the dictator. you re not concerned about what people are saying on the streets. you have no political opposition. so when he s speaking to the security forces. this is a message to his local population, the domestic russian audience.
and now you ve got clean-up time. bobby, this is we can t forget the biggest threat to putin s regime power in 23 years, in power. now he has to go. he really seems to want to be seen what he did last night and what he s going to do any moment now. but you have said this is akin to an emperor without clothes. can he unite, reunite his people? well, he still has absolute power, but he has been exposed does he have their hearts? that s the question. does he have the full loyalty of his closest circle of people? nobody was closer to him than prigozhin. this is a guy who used to cook for him. and rose through the ranks because of his closeness to putin. the guy closest to him sent his troops against moscow. that s, as you say, that s the strongest challenge he has faced in 23 years in power. you can t square the circle.
ops. all of this puts president biden in a very tough spot. while trump was entirely reckless in office, flaunting over modi as much as possible. biden will have to set a different tone. you will have to walk the tightrope keeping india on our side geopolitically, while doing his best to not excuse modi s democratic and human rights abuses. how did he do today? joining us now is bobby gauche, pick him colonist, the former editor in chief of the hindu style times. bobby, good evening, thanks for joining us tonight. this is a tight rope for joe biden. it is not an easy one. he is got a fight going on with china at the moment, he s got a big fight going on with russia. you just cannot play with india and china and russia at the same time. that is about the size of it. i would push back a little bit to say that just because you can t pick a fight with india, it does not mean you need to go overboard and fallen over the prime minister, who has such a questionable record, and whose values
he is popular with a large section of the indian débora. that is certainly a factor. the indian deals perot is not a major factor in american elections not yet anyway. there has got to be, you think a point where american value the values that biden himself claims to have here, no matter how much money you give. bobby, thank you as always for your analysis, we have appreciated. thank you. still more to come tonight. kevin mccarthy doesn t seem to be able to keep his house in order. morning, fighting among the republicans today. raising the question, who exactly controls the republican party s agenda? also, who bailed and battled republican congressman george santos it ll last month? today we learn the answer, we still get a lot of questions. that s next. that s next. i m a retired school librarian. i m also a library board trustee, a mother of two,