us who watch what happens in russia is that the state became an instrument of gang rule, it s a gang ruling the state and using state assets of finance and all other for their totally illegal even from the point of view of russian constitution, totally illegal actions. right, as you say, for people to understand, it s sort of like you re saying putin holds out this gangster approach skpshs and it s what you can call someone to do your dirty work, a kleptocracy, and it s sort of biting back on him. i m curious if you can then explain to us from there where any of this would bring out his potential putin s potential opponents within government, kremlin or otherwise. does this weaken him as some
over that city of rostov, that is a logistics hub for a city of ukraine. that is 1 million people. getting than 145 miles of moscow, that s not a small thing. i do think prigozhin may have wanted to test whether or not there was a collapse of the russian structure, whether or not other leaders, other fiefdoms within the russian kleptocracy that putin set out, people often came with him. that didn t happen. most people say behind putin. i don t necessarily think that the side of putin strength, i think it s a sign that people didn t necessarily want to put jump on the train with prigozhin. therefore, he de-escalated, and took a deal. he took a deal, by the way, that was very different from what putin said on television, we thought this was a mutiny, that production should be detained, he was going to be prosecuted. putting out a climb down as part of this deal, and started prigozhin. i don t think we have the last of him. and i certainly don t think we ve heard the last of potential i
intel officer specializing in russian tactics for 24 years. he joins me now. supposedly they have buried the hatchet. supposedly prigozhin is just going to talk his forces back boo ukraine or perhaps belarus, and everything s going to be hunky dory. do you believe that? no, i don t, jon. i don t at all. look, agreements in russia have a very short is half-life. written agreements slightly more than verbal agreements. both men, both prigozhin and vladimir putin, need to be watching their backs right now. this has not been good for russia, it s not been good for putin s kleptocracy. this weakens him in the eyes of russians and in the eyes of the world especially in places like the people s republic of china. this is it is not a good outcome for russia. they ve had a large scale, armed revolt. and in ukraine, this has implications for russians, russia s occupation of ukraine as well. you re going to see significant
neil: i know you had talked about you want to go back to aspire to some ideals as a country i don t want to misquote or misparaphrase you. that was your father s wish, your late uncle s wish, but is it realistic? i don t want to sound cynical, is it realistic in this day and age? the values that i m talking about are just constitutional values. you know, that we ought to have free speech in this country, that we ought to that we ought to have, you know, freedom of bodily autonomy, that we ought to try to treat each other that if you work hard, if you play by the rules, you ought to be able to get ahead and that, you know, the rich don t have the special advantages. we ve turned the country into a corporate kleptocracy that the wealth is strip-mined from the
the general theme in my speech was this merger of state and corporate power, which has which is which is turning our country into a corporate kleptocracy. into a system of socialism for the rich and a cushy socialism for the rich. and that s kind of brutal. merciless capitalism for the poor. it keeps us in a state of war. it bails out banks the same time that, you know, this month, last united states government told 30 million people it was cutting their welfare, their food stamps by 90. it took it to 15 million people. medicare the same month. it gave three hundred million dollars to the silicon valley bank and tapped the cost of the ukraine war to one hundred and thirteen billion. we re sending one hundred and thirteen billion to the ukraine . the entire budget of epa is 12