hi, bret. bret: this is america s newsroom. 36 hours of chaos threatening vladimir putin s grip on power. mercenary group that was supporting russia in ukraine turning against the kremlin and marching towards moscow. dana: the rebels were members of the wagner group. their leader called off the revolte at the 11th hour. not clear why. his whereabouts right now are unknown. ukrainian forces taking advantage of the chaos. they are reporting gains against russian troops in the east. russian defense minister is making his first public appearance since the revolt doing little to quell speculation that putin is in serious jeopardy. much of his longevity is tied to what happens inside ukraine. he knows full well his future is dependent on what happens in ukraine. i don t see him admitting that he made a terrible mistake here and pull all his troops out. you see a real public perception going against putin. he doesn t have a strong sense of being a strong man anymore. see
agreed between prigozhin and putin. i suspect that we ll learn more in the days and weeks ahead about what deal they struck. too soon to tell what will happen to the wagner forces. blinken said they communicated the u.s. wants to make sure civilians inside ukraine and russia are safe. we ll ask them about it at a briefing coming up. dana: let s bring in former secretary of state condoleezza rice. wonderful to have you here today on this particular day. quite a day. in fact, i was thinking you would have been my first call if i was press secretary. what is your assessment of what happened? i ve seen a lot of strange things in studying russia. this is one of the strangest. indeed, we now think perhaps the u.s. intelligence knew that something was brewing inside the wagner group. russian intelligence must have
and cleared of charges. russian officials say he could face the music. one of the targets prigozhin s anger shoigu was seen today. no verification of date or location. moscow issued a new video of russian president putin said to be addressing remotely a youth forum. moscow media today has been knocking the government s handling of the crisis including deal struck. while ukraine tries to take advantage of things. some russian units have been shifted during the unrest. some ukrainian inroads were made especially in the east. officials here including one member of parliament we spoke with think any loss of prestige for the kremlin is good for ukraine. take a listen. how much damage was done to putin? i think huge. despite huge, absolutely. he lost a lot of reputation
known something was brewing. they keep people inside of all these units who are loyal to the kremlin. that they didn t do anything about it before it reached this fever pitch is really quite strange to me. it is also this deal. i was listening americans were surprised by this deal. everybody was surprised by the deal including russians. and now the problem for putin is he has to explain why after going on television in that five-minute address, rather alarmist address about how it might be 1917 all over again and we were going to crush them and they were treasonous and then you make a deal. one reason you haven t heard putin speak is they are trying to get the story together to justify what happened here. dana: putin has always been worried about this. this is the kind of russian dna to worry about the revolt. they have had multiple revolts against the kremlin throughout their history, the most famous the one that putin referenced in
i thought could it be staged, but you wouldn t stage something that makes you look so weak because really, dictators, thor tarrance rest on three principles. one is there has to be fear in the population. secondly, you have to look invincible. third, there can be no alternatives. this has exploded all of those for putin. it also has exploded his myth that the ukrainian special military operation could take place without any effect on russia, without any effect on the russian population, and that it was a just and necessary war. probably the most damaging thing about this is that prigozhin said what has been unspoken by those who have supported the war, that this is actually a war that did not have to take place where hundreds of thousands of russians did not have to die, where a million people didn t have to flee the country. that s the most damaging thing that prigozhin has done. dana: if you could forecast