because of an insurrection led by the leader of the wagner mercenaries that ended nearly as soon as it started. an apparent clash between wagner and russian troops which was followed by a fire at that oil refinery you see on your screen there. under the deal done, the kremlin says wagner troops will not face any legal action, but they ll sign new contracts with russia s defense ministry while moscow will drop its charges against prig prigozhin, who will go to belarus. wagner s leader says he agreed to that in order to avoid bloodshed. translator: therefore, realizing all the responsibility for the fact that russian blood will be shed from one of the sides, we turn our columns around and leave in the opposite direction to the field camps, according to the plan. the kremlin says it doesn t know where prigozhin is right now. what you see there is video of people cheering as he left ross stor-on-don where his troops seized military facilities on saturday. officials now tell c
ministry of defense. that s actually already been taking place before these events. but one could read between the lines there s going to be an attempt to assimilate prigozhin s men into the organized russian military. will that take place? will these men switch loyaltiys easily to the ministry of defense? and looking at the character, prigozhin, this very loud bombastic public figure who has openly challenged russia s military leadership for months you don t think he ll go silently into the night. over the last 36 hours he s gone from showing up the russian military to showing up president putin himself demonstrating that he s not the only one with a monopoly of power, as you heard from my colleague ivan watson there. that might be the greatest threat of all is indicating that weakness, showing that sign of ability to do that and get away with it. and you ve heard how are critics treated in the past by president putin. they are silenced, they are
has of completely eliminating any critics whatsoever. so it s hard to see this in any way other than putin lost credibility, his reputation as a strong man has been seriously dented. yeah, yeah, indeed. ivan, thanks as always. ivan watson there in hong kong. all right, let s take a closer look at the role belarus played in all of this. i m joined by cnn s abdella aziz in london. first of all, there s a lot we don t know. we know a deal was struck, of course. we saw those images of prigozhin leaving rostov-on-don with people cheering, clapping, trying to shake his hand. really dramatic images there of a support in a city he says not a single shot was fired as he rolled in with his men and took over the southern command of
russia s military leadership for a while while washington did not see any change in russia s nuclear posture during the turmoil. for more on all of this let s go to ivan watson in hong kong. iven, yevgeny prigozhin is not one to be quiet for long, but we ve not heard from him since he left rostov-on-don, have we? no, not since he essentially declared victory and said his troops were turning around after getting, he claimed, within 200 kilometers of moscow and saying he didn t want to spill blood. so that s left basically russia and the world trying to digest what actually just happened here. and i don t think even people close to the kremlin really have a firm answer because it was just saturday morning that vladimir putin was making a televised address to the nation saying that this was a dire threat to the country, that he was comparing this to the 1917
convention. the texas congressman will join us live this hour. we ll talk about his presidential hopes and the 2012 election. and if you re fuming about surprise credit card fees or lousy service, there s now a place where you can share your complaints with the entire world. i m wolf blitzer. you re in the situation room. this is just coming in to the the situation room right now. take a look at this. wow. it s a huge, huge crowd that has gathered at tahrir square in cairo. tens of thousands of people back at the site where last year s revolution started. the demonstrators are protesting the moves made by the egyptian military leadership, which they say could hurt the presidential election results. also, only moments ago we have confirmed that the former president of egypt, hosni mubarak, has suffered a stroke. that according to officials in egypt. his heart apparently has stopped. but it was revived. he needed critical condition care. he has received it. we re monito