good morning, it is 11:00 a.m. eastern, i m katy tur here from new york. and i m chris jansing with special coverage on what is happening inside russia. for the first time, we are still waiting to hear from vladimir putin. now, we haven t heard anything since his former ally and the head of the ruthless mercenary wagner group attempt add revolt, and this new video released by russia, is it new or just something put out by the kremlin? who knows when it was taped. we can t say. and where is the man responsible for the dramatic weekend events, yevgeny prigozhin. right now we still don t know and he hasn t been seen since saturday when he decided to turn his forces back after marching toward the kremlin. and seemingly agreed to live in exile in belarus. so now russia, a country armed with more nuclear weapons than any other nation led by a man desperate to proclaim the old soviet union glory is at a crossroads. and while the world watches, ukraine is acting. ukrainian forces
their counteroffensive and take advantage of the disarray in russia over the next couple of weeks. we ve gotten an updated translation from our own people on what prigozhin said. as a result oaf intrigues of poorly thought out decision wagner was supposed to have ended its existence on july 1st, 2023. i presume he s talking about the deal that russia wanted to fold all of these mercenary groups under the direction of the ministry of defense. those fighters who have decided they are ready to join the ministry of defense have done so, but it s a very small number measured at around 1 to 2%. he says we were categorically against what they, the government and the defense wanted to do. the administrative defense launched a missile strike on us and immediately following this helicopters attacked us, he says. nearly 30 wagner fighters were killed, he says. we stopped for the following two reasons, firstly to prevent russian blood from being shed.