he would be? probably not in the kremlin. probably not there. he doesn t spend many nights in the kremlin. he is, i m sure, in a very safe place. he s probably watching very carefully. he should be very nervous. he s got big problems here. he s got the military that is now diverting its attention to one of its own, prigozhin, to the wagner group. so and again, as general hertling just said, putin s got a real problem within the country. this is a series of problems that he s got to deal with right now. putin and prigozhin go way back. as you well know. they were prigozhin was a close confidant of putin s. do you have a sense of where putin s loyalties lie, if that is such a thing with putin? it s a good question. does he have loyalties? i think the answer is probably no. the expectation the understanding is that putin changes his mind, shifts his favor, from one to another, to
pleading with prigozhin tonight, was a young lieutenant colonel in the tank unit that fired the first shot at the russian parliament. he spent several months in jail in a gulag, because of that last coup attempt. now he s on telegram asking for support for mr. putin as this continues. that is interesting history and context, general. we re trying to get real information in. as you point out, it s very hard out of russia. russian tv interrupted their regularly scheduled programming to denounce prigozhin s claims as basically unreality. and so how will the pentagon figure out what s actually happening there tonight? first of all, they re not going to rely on russian tv for any truth-telling. the u.s. intelligence community probably has a much better feel for what s going on than we do, but i would also suggest certainly a better feel for what s going on than even mr. putin does. they have intelligence human
ensure that no one gets particularly powerful that could threaten him. you re right, putin and prigozhin go way back. but not as military. prigozhin has recently come on the scene as the head of the wagner. for a while he denied he was even associated with it. now he admits and it s clear that he s involved in this thing. and putin has got the worry that prigozhin is mounting a coup. they re talking about a coup, an armed coup that could threaten putin s regime. so is that for real? in other words, you re saying that the wagner group, if prigozhin were to go ahead with this, this armed rebellion, as he s threatening, that he could pull off a coup? he has said he s doing a march for justice. someone earlier said that he was
really could be russian soldiers that have some sympathy, maybe not for wagner, but some sympathy for some anti-putin sentiment. how does the u.s. respond, what should the white house reaction be? probably not too much right now. i think working with ukraine to understand the intelligence of this, how you can take advantage of it on the battlefield, which they ve been doing very well so far. you know, we don t want to necessarily get involved in a civil war or civil conflict in russia. but let me say this, too. this is an important moment for us now to remind those that have been parroting putin s lies, whether it s turker carlson or people in the senate and house, they re been parroting the lies that this was a war brought on by nato, that ukraine deserved it, because prigozhin himself again, the head of basically a terrorist organization said to the russian people tonight that russia has been lying to them about the cause of the war,
jason, he lived without crimea since 1954. he doesn t need crimea. so yes, he can stop this any time, and he can begin the negotiations on that basis, i think on that basis, ukrainians would be happy. they have said they would be happy to negotiate at that time. so this is one that also gets me. there are lots of people, international left and sort of international peace advocates who have said, you know what, we would have already had a peace deal on the table, but america and the west, they want this to be a proxy war now. and it s not it s not the same thing as parroting putin s talking points. there are people who said, you can give up this bit of land, move people here and there. this war only exacerbates conflict in the region. is there legitimacy to that? is there an argument that now ukraine might be so far into this, and the west and nato are so far into it that realistic diplomatic options are no longer on the table? it s fascinating to see the