prigozhin accused russian defense minister sure gate shoigu of ordering a rocket strike on wagner s camps. in ukraine, but hours later after reportedly traveling some 120 miles outside of moscow, the wagner group leader ordered his forces to halt their march on the capital city, and return to their camps. in a post on telegram, prigozhin said the move was done in order to avoid russian bloodshed. now, this follows an announcement from belarus that the russian ally and neighbor had negotiated a deal to de-escalate the situation. kremlin spokesperson dimitri peskov provided some details of the compromise. russia s criminal case against prigozhin, that would be closed and he would go into exile and remain in belarus. moreover, wagner fighters who participated in today s offense will not be prosecuted. now, before we begin our reporting coverage for the hour, we want to give you some more context on this group, the wagner group. it is important to russia, its importance to the fi
tonight, we begin with breaking news out of russia. a major twist in that country s war against ukraine. vladimir putin forced to confront a rebellion within his own borders. just hours ago, we learned that if guinea prigozhin, the owner and the head of the wagner group and mercenary force that has been fighting alongside the russian military and ukraine, halted his advance on to the country s capital. that announcement came shortly after prigozhin claimed he and his fighters had captured the city of rostov-on-don home to the russian military headquarters for its war in ukraine. since their invasion last year, moscow has become dependent on the back in a group to support the war efforts as they re dwindling russian forces struggle to make significant gains inside ukrainian territory. in december, the u.s. said it believed the group had an estimated 50,000 personnel inside ukraine alone. it made up of about 10,000 contractors and 40,000 convicts that were recruited from inside
a fault of the west for encroaching on russia and supporting ukraine to join nato. so, i don t think anybody wants to give him that hook to hang all of this on. so they ve done a really good job in staying silent. and i m sure that they re just gonna be test to skiing when they re on the sunday shows. what does this mean for the back in a group at large? how does the u.s. deal with them after this apparent split with russia? i think we should clarify, it s a split with prigozhin. and they wanted to bring him it s the group under. but they serve a lot of purposes for the russian regime. they offered them plausible deniability, i m sure you remember the i.r.a., which interfered in the u.s. elections in 2016. they run mercenary operations in africa. they were involved in syria. so they give a lot of powerful deniability and movement, treatment movement, to take actions that the russian government would not have
good evening and welcome to ayman let s reset and assess where we are at the beginning of this second hour. tonight, we re following a pivotal turning point in the war in ukraine, an internal military rebellion in russia. leader of the brutal wagner military group, yevgeny prigozhin. it comes just days after
unprecedented. now, to temper that a little bit, prigozhin was not directly challenging putin. he was not saying he was marching on moscow in order to bring down the president. he was he has very traditional view of putin as being surrounded by bad advisors and he was marching to the capital to speak to the president so that the president will do something about the ministry of defense which prigozhin believes is not doing its job. nonetheless, for the people of russia, this idea that putin no longer has the monopoly on political action and no longer has a monopoly on force is revolutionary. so let me ask you about the ministry of defense here for a moment. because yevgeny prigozhin, he specifically gone after, as you just said, not the president but sergei shoigu, the minister of defense. and they had a public argument last month and it was shoigu that percussion accused of ordering this rocket strike on the back in a group inside ukraine.