path of treason. his government has also announced it will carry out counter-terrorist operations in the regions of moscow. it comes hours after prigozhin claimed to have seized several military facilities in southern russia. the wagner chief says he is retaliating against the russian defense ministry for allegedly killing many of his mercenaries in a strike, in a claim the ministry denies. in an audio recording prigozhin further criticized the russian military. translator: the ukrainian counteroffensive is bringing us serious losses and problems which are hushed up, which the russian people don t know about. when the trouble comes i ll repeat, we may remain without an army and without russia. now earlier cnn s allison spoke to william taylor, asking if putin has any loyalty to prigozhin. here it is. the understanding is that putin changes his mind, shifts
much blowback but that d disruption has snowballed into an open insurrection, and crossed the line with the kremlin. so tell us more about the man at the center of this storm. how did we get here? it s quite extraordinary. not that it came to a head. because in so many ways if you had followed prigozhin over the last few months that seemed all but inevitable, but that president paw tineutin allowed come to a head. putin s private army, doing his bidding from africa to the middle east, setting up troll factories to interfere with u.s. elections but he did it all behind a curtain cam, it wasn t until the invasion of ukraine that prigozhin stepped into the limelight and began to openly air russia s dirty laundry, antagonize its military leaders, use the most inflammatory possible language against the
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they pulled out of the fight at one point and by some of their hig high-level losses as well and perhaps they are not so keen on this fight. this is the question for putin right now, that he s not addressing, which is the war in ukraine, is it being fought well? was his initial invasion wise? of course prigozhin is putting this off on the defense chief, and the defense minister. but the question really lands at putin s feet and this will be the question about the war. so i think the international community is going to look at all these at all of that. but for putin one of the key questions at the moment is going to be the loyalty of kadirov as things move forward. nic, based on what we heard from putin last hour, has he been painted into a corner here? does he have no choice but to arrest or possibly kill prigozhin, or is a compromise and a climbdown still possible? i think there are some things
back for these two men in this situation. putin has gone on television accused prigozhin of treason which in putin s view as we ve seen over the last 23 years is the highest crime of which you can be accused. he s stopped referring to prigozhin by name, which is an honor that he reserves for some of his greatest opponents, including aleksey in a vaulny. you get the sense prigozhin is dead to putin. the u.s. is monitoring the situation. how much intel and insight do you think they have on what s happening right now? are there discussions, do you think, taking place behind the scenes between the two countries right now? well, the u.s. intelligence community does appear to have sources within the russian security apparatus, and upper echelons of the russian state. we ve seen that throughout this