vladimir putin in a surprisingly quick advance on moscow. the wagner group claimed to seize control of an important russian military facility in the city of rostov-on-don. [ applause ] the leader of the wagner group says they captured the facility, a key operations base, for the war on ukraine without firing a single shot. the cheers you just heard are locals showing their support ahead of wagner. yevgeny prigozhin also claimed to seize a military facility in another city about halfway to moscow. that s when prigozhin said he ordered his mercenaries to suddenly turn around. this is video of them pulling out of one town. and here s prigozhin receiving a hero s farewell as he leaves. he said he did it to avoid a bloody conflict. 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. we re following all
you saw when they were rolling in. i thought it was a lack luster at best attempt of the folks trying to stop prigozhin from coming in in the wagner group. so who knows? let me ask you this. back in april, you and other conservative lawmakers sent a letter to president biden saying would you no longer support unrestrained american aid to ukraine. do you want to reconsider that? i don t, personally. it is our war. it is europe s war. i still think putin is a dirt bag and i wish he would be deposed and i wish somebody had a bigger heart for russia and their people and the ukrainians would take over. i still think it is a bad idea for us to be in that war. it has shades of vietnam. we re just ramping this thing up. don t you want to see the russians defeated? i mean absolutely.
sbeernls and the narrative of russia. the mental band width of the leaders in russia and elsewhere, let alone the military, the fallout, and an ugly war that is now increasingly being reinforced to the public. yes, now imagine you are a mid level russian officer and you re completely tuned in to all this. what is going on in moscow? what is going on in my country? and the young russian on the line oh, by the way, the wagner group is out. they re still dealing with a fight with the ukrainians who have got to be absolutely heartened by this. and going to come at them even harder.
posture. thank you. we appreciate that. there s speculation of other consequences for the leader of the wagner military group. our next guest has had some choice words for the russian president. last year he slammed putin amidst talks of a potential ukrainian peace deal. when they re at the peace talks table, he s bombing hospitals. he s a dirt bag. that s all they re going to do, those kinds of things. here with us to discuss, the house foreign affairs member, tim, congressman, what is your reaction to this wild day in russia? wild is right, jim. thank you for having me on. putin is learning if you can t trust a bloodthirsty mercenary, who in the world can you trust? he s like his protege.
mortal blow. in the most unlikely of ways, though yevgeny prigozhin and wagner, he s been talking and speaking, i don t think anybody could have imagined this would happen. what he has done is he has divided the russians. he s got them squabbling publicly. if you re a russian citizen, you say what the heck is going on with our leadership? or a soldier? where you see the wagner group is fighting with the military. no. this may take time but this is a mortal bl to putin and his regime. beth, is that how you see it? what does putin do now? does he get desperate or sort of sit back and assess the scene now that he has supposedly gotten prigozhin out of the way and off to belarus, we should