inside eastern ukraine where the war is playing out. horrors striking a city center as a top russian investigative reporter has new details for us about the phone calls leading up to the insurrection against putin. that reporter is my guest. and my full explosive interview with the ukrainian foreign minister, why he thinks the threat to putin is far from over, and his fears of an attack on europe s largest nuclear power plant. plus, a wagner commander speaks out to cnn about yevgeny prigozhin s bold coup attempt and what s next for the man who humiliated vladimir putin. let s go outfront. and good evening, i m erin burnett. welcome to a special edition of outfront. we are live tonight in eastern ukraine in the city of dnipro, a city on the road to the front lines of putin s war. behind me, you see blackness. but there is a city behind me of nearly 1 million people. it is just completely dark. after curfew completely dark. the street lights behind me are all shut off
his mission. reporter: the reasons for putin s clemency not yet clear. but they may be linked to the philosophy at the heart of wagner s operations as was told to cnn last year. for years wagner has operated the kremlin s shadow foreign policy across the middle east and africa, and much closer to home. translator: putin sees prigozhin as a really effective commander. the more so that the successful functioning of the african project speaks in his favor. reporter: but it wasn t in prigozhin s strength. the biggest challenge to his power in more than 20 years. there are, of course, in all of the questions that this now raises for the ukrainian battlefields, but there are also those questions far beyond all of those wagner soldiers for all of those years who have played