hi there, everyone. i m nicole wallace, thanks for being here with us. we ve got a lot of places you get your news today, we re glad you re joining us. four pm in the east, it s 11 pm in moscow. we re following breaking news this hour, with the latest on the revolt unfolding in russia. and we see news is confirming, yevgeny prigozhin is the head of the wagner group, which is a private mercenary army in russia, that s done a lot of the fighting in the war in ukraine. he has called for his moscow bound convoy to stand down for now. that s only after advancing to within 120 miles of the city of moscow. in the biggest threat to russian president vladimir putin s grip on power that we ve ever seen. prigozhin sent a voice note, signaling that the forces would stand down, saying the group understands, quote, the responsibility for spilling russian blood on one of the sides. we are turning back our convoys, and going back to field camps, according to the plan. this comes just hours a
sitting right now in this total embarrassment on the russian federation. go ahead, julia. sorry, i was just going to say that the whole point of any government, especially and authoritarian one, is that you have a monopoly on force. he has shown that not only does he not have a monopoly on force, but the forces he has are not very effective. either at abroad or at home, in terms of protecting the homeland. so he looks tremendously damaged, injured, and weekend. which means the coming hours and days will be nothing short of riveting. we will continue to call on both of you. lieutenant general stephen twitty, and julia ioffe. thank you both so much for spending time with us. our chief foreign affairs correspondent, andrea mitchell, will join us next with her read on what we are watching unfold in russia. please don t go anywhere. anywhere
victory through all the resources they need. i guess we don t have a war with this high degree of instability in the system. i think those are the things that first come to mind. colonel vindman, how credible is the kremlin s statement issued through russian state media, that amnesty would be offered to prigozhin? and that his troops who didn t take up arms would be folded into the russian military? eight hours ago he called them, describe it as treason. that seems highly unrealistic. we are not clearly seeing everything that is happening behind the curtain. i think prigozhin likely, you know, demanded he had a critical position of strength. he demanded that shoigu and gerasimov, be removed and replaced with competent generals. he likely demanded the freedom of operation for the wagner forces, and suffered in a part of the ministry of defense.
in general has been connecting this war. they have, probably when the tougher sector was responsible for an offensive that the russians were conducting over the course of the winter. they were the only sector that made any gains. these are hardened troops that, it s a combination of special ops ex military special operations forces. airborne forces. a whole lot of russian prisoners, that have been hardened in either years of experience in wars in the middle east and africa, or in this war in ukraine, fighting in his very, very tough sector. the rest of the picture that russia had the rest of the battlefield, the vast majority of the frontline, and didn t manage to make any gains over the course of their offensive. wagner gets a lot of credit for that. one other thing i d just like to make a point about, this is an enormously important period in this war.
reporting on what prigozhin might have negotiated his indictment is of the conduct of the russian military, and his critique of his leaders. do you have any indication that there any concessions from the kremlin? the concession appears to be the withdrawal of this criminal case that was opened by the domestic security agency, the fsb, yesterday. prigozhin, at this moment, has some leverage. he s still, at least as of a couple hours ago, seem to be in control of the southern city of rostov. the kremlin, as you can imagine, desperate to avoid the spectacle of russian forces opening fire on each other. at the gates of moscow. prigozhin had some cords to play. the question is, if you he withdraws from rostov, if his forces go back to their bases, if they return to the front lines here in ukraine, what sort of rule of age does he have? what kind of guarantees does he have that he is going to be a