we re going to see just full on chaos from now until 2024. just like this 2020, the poll suggests voters who kind of dislike both candidates are still breaking for biden. that could be the difference. elise jordan, stick around for morning joe. thanks for being with us this morning. thanks to all of you for getting up way too early on this monday morning. morning joe starts right now. this is the latest chapter in a book of failure that putin has written for himself. right. and for russia. economically, militarily, his standing in the world, all of those things have plummeted. now, with trouble brewing from within, as i said, this adds more questions that he has to find answers for. confusion and uncertainty in russia this morning after a failed revolt by the head of the wagner mercenary group. it was the most significant challenge to vladimir putin s authority in decades.
it started on friday when yevgeny prigozhin, the leader of a private army, posted a video to social media. in it, he suggests the russian invasion of ukraine was launched under false pretenses before accusing the russian military leaders of bombing his own soldiers. prigozhin vowed to retaliate, and his forces began their movement east soon after. by early saturday morning, prigozhin s wagner group claimed control of a military command center in southern russia. video shows civilians filming soldiers and tanks on the streets of the russian city as more wagner forces continued their push north toward moscow. it came as russian president vladimir putin made a televised address, calling prigozhin s armed mutiny treason and threatening to punish anyone who turned against the russian
this is the top of the hour. look at that beautiful shot of new york city on this monday morning. welcome back to morning joe. it is monday, june 26th. joe is on assignment this morning. jonathan lemire, elise jordan and michael steele are still with us. our top story this morning, of course, the breaking developments out of russia, where the head of the mercenary wagner group launched the most direct challenge to vladimir putin s grip on power in his 19 years as president. it started on friday when yevgeny prigozhin posted a video to social media. in it, he suggests russia s invasion of ukraine was launched under false pretenses, before accusing russian military
involvement whatsoever. and, look, i think the bottom line here, alex, is that putin is the one who s paying a price for something he created. he s the one who put together the wagner group, this group of mercenaries under prigozhin. he s deployed them to asia, to africa, to ukraine where they ve committed all kinds of atrocities. and then when prigozhin started speaking out and criticizing both putin as well as the russian military, putin took no steps, really, to discipline prigozhin. and when they tried to finally bring wagner into the russian army, that s when prigozhin decided to conduct this coup. so, frankly, the bottom headline here is putin has no one to blame for himself for what occurred in russia. do you think that putin will be able to convince those around him and russians really all
hi, i m sharon, and i lost 52 pounds on golo. on other diets, i could barely lose 10-15 pounds. thanks to golo, i ve lost 27% of my body weight, and it was easy. (soft music) just into cnn, there is new evidence that u.s. intelligence was clued in to plans for the wagner chief s rebellion in russia over the weekend. cnn s natasha bertrand is at the