half past the hour, 11:30 on the east coast of the united states, startling developments in russia, it s under siege, for want of a better term, by 25,000 soldiers and led by one of its most ruthless, but still respected generals in russian history. i m talking about yevgeny prigozhin that leads the wagner group, paid military soldiers and more to the point vladimir putin s bidding. and they re making their way to moscow now and moscow is under lockdown now and moscow s mayor says monday will be nonworking day to minimize risk, that s probably a good idea if your city is under siege, but we might not get to monday as being an independent moscow city at the rate we re going. it is to the general s point, very unlikely, but again, this whole day seems unlikely, where rebels have effectively come in and turned on the very folks
for that, vladimir putin did not call him back to moscow for that. the defense ministers, though they tried to remove him did not remove him, could not remove him and now the irony is a little more than six weeks later he s doing his best to remove them, having taken control of rostov-on-don. this is a key military base, if you will. sort of the center for the ukrainian war effort and some extended just to the army s headquarters itself, but that might be overly generallylizing it. i want to go to general jack keane what he makes of these developments. what s remarkable, general, what is going on right now and whether it builds beyond that. what s historic, moscow preparing for potential siege, ready for that, saying that this represents something that is not at all patriotic and certainly saying that prigozhin s ties with the kremlin, particularly to vladimir putin himself, those are shattered now, but he is so
and we ve seen russian incompetence before and this is a surprise. there s nothing planned about this in terms of russian intelligence i m aware of and its ability to react to this. so, we don t know what that outcome is going to be. the implications, you know, going forward, neil, here certainly wagner and prigozhin is risking their entire existence and putin is absolutely going to be weakened by this. there s no disputing that. he s going to be held accountable by his elites to some degree in letting this disagreement that prigozhin made public so many months ago and kept going with it, get to a point where there s obviously a significant internal division inside of russia over how the war should be prosecuted. neil: yeah, you mentioned so many great points and there s that old crass expression, i don t mean to be crass, if
china, you name it. colonel, what do you think is the battle plan here, quite literally? well, prigozhin has been upset with what s going on, the loss of life. failure by the general staff over the term of this war. and it goes back even further. you know, he lost hundreds of people in syria to our own weapons, u.s. weapons, and elsewhere. you know, i would look, believe it or not, neil, i would ask president xi in beijing whether or not, you know, this has soiled his relationship with putin. s been over there and he sent his prime leadership over there to talk to the russians. i believe that this is going to have a significant impact going forward on that relationship which is significant for russia because of the sanctions that it s facing because of the energy that china consumes, and china s new place in the world. so, i haven t seen anything as
of the west has interpreted xi s relationship with putin. and so, this could be actually the downfall of putin. i think if xi abandons putin then you begin to see a progression of leadership changes perhaps in moscow. i don t think that prigozhin is going to take over moscow, but he is certainly going to make an attempt to intimidate, you know, putin and his generals and as a result, the confidence is going to be drained out of putin in spite of, you know, some of the good spin that we re seeing from the ffb and the russian media at the present time. neil: you know, colonel, what does he do with prigozhin. assuming he s able to put this rebellion or whatever you want to call it down. prigozhin is a popular fellow, i m not comparing him as i was saying earlier in this broadcast, douglas macarthur