now. our second hour star welcome . i m yasmin vossoughian, if you just running, as welcome. if you re sticking with, us we re thankful for that. we have got a lot of developments in russia, as the head of the wagner group, yevgeny prigozhin, says his mercenary group is turning back and abandoning s march towards moscow. he made that announcement after the president of belarus claimed he held talks with prigozhin. i want to bring in nbc s met in standing back and trying. this math, you heard this thing firsthand. talk us through what you heard from prigozhin, the revelation of this, quote unquote, deal. thank you, yasmin. obviously, very shocking development, after what has been, as we ve discussed, very astonishing 24 hours in russia. we had another audio message from prigozhin. he speaks very intensely, always, part of his charm, for lack of better word. we saw that again in this latest message, also a little bit taking a step back. he s admitting that he stepping down
next few hours, days and weeks, to see how loyal the security services and the national guard in russia remain to putin, as that we ve seen some chunks in his armor. key complicated allies, iran in china. to russia. what do we know about any conversations, either those two leaders have, with president putin. and why they would be watching this play out so closely. well, these are two key allies of russia. these are two partners that they can rely on. i mean, we just saw secretary blinken went to china on a goodwill mission. before he even got back to the states, president biden was calling president xi a dictator. putin can rely on she not to call him out in public. he couldn t rely on him on support. he can rely on their iranians to keep providing them with drones to fight that war. it s a mutual relationship, the iranians, the last thing they