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
plot to take him out, and they really did want to avoid that because that is a play book that putin has used in the past. and so president biden, he was updated. he did leave for camp david around midday today. and he did bring with him the national security advisor, jake sullivan. so certainly he s being briefed very regularly on this. but i think the question that he and his officials will want to look at now is really what does president putin s grip on power currently look like? does this change anything in terms of his ability to lead russia? and i think that is something that they will really want to take a very close look at. this is certainly a very volatile moment in the 16 months since this war began, michael. indeed, it is thank you. kevin liptak there in washington following things for us. stay with us. when we come back how did the russian media cover the wagner rebellion as it unfolded? also one of the questions at
chechnya who had deployed according to chechen media thousands of his forces to poe potentially confront the wagner mercenaries on saturday. even after the deal was announced the charges would be dropped for what putin described as an armed rebellion, he came out and condemned this saying i trusted prigozhin and he betrayed that trust. he also went onto say he called prigozhin a businessman who said that his anger stemmed from the fact that his daughter had not been provided a desired land plot by the authorities of st. petersburg. so we re getting hints at kind of disagreements that you might not typically hear about anywhere in certainly the
this these events might affect the war in ukraine because certainly on their face a weakened vladimir putin would potentially be good for the ukrainians. but i think on the flip side there is this question that is being asked now at the white house, at the pentagon is what president putin might do if he feels cornered, if he feels boxed in? will he lash out? and remember, michael, russia has the largest stockpile of nuclear weapons in the world, and so this is sort of an ongoing worry for the white house. and i do think that has informed some of the strategy that you saw unfold over the last two days, which is basically to say nothing. and, in fact, president biden when he did get on that phone call with leaders from europe this morning, he did make the point and the leaders did agree that trying to say anything more than they ve said had the potential to allow president putin this pretext for claiming some sort of american or nato
revolution and raising the specter of a possible civil war. so one of the propagandists on state television on his program saturday night you could see him almost physically wrestling with the discomfort of wagner mercenaries who he had broadcast alongside including prigozhin himself who he had called heroes who had brought russia to the brink as he put it of a civil war. take a listen. translator: the country was on the brink of tragedy. it was a very difficult day. it was a day where if not many then very many have revealed themselves. a day that cannot be forgotten, lessons that have to be considered. it should be closely examined who said what and when and how they behaved. and another powerful figure in russia is the president of