allies. he played a role in bringing saturday s crisis to an end through a negotiated establishment between yevgeny prigozhin and the kremlin before the situation escalated even further and russian lives were lost. cnn s chief u.s. security correspondent jim sciutto explains. reporter: it s interesting for lukashenko to have this kind of influence at this stage, because remember, back in the days before the invasion, lukashenko portrayed himself as the person who could negotiate a peace between putin and zelenskyy to avoid that war. of course, that effort failed, and perhaps was never serious, because putin was intent on invading that country. in this circumstance, it seems that lukashenko played a role. i mean, we should not exaggerate that role, because any final decision would be with the russian president, vladimir putin, himself. but perhaps lukashenko here, whose own leadership has been in question, his own actual control of his country has been in
trust even among those in his orbit. how has all of this played out in terms of what the public is seeing and hearing about what happened? reporter: you know, it s interesting. certainly the kremlin sought to try and control the narrative, as it normally would. but this time it seemed more for the purposes of avoiding panic than anything else. net blocks, which is a nonprofit that tries to monitor internet censorship, did indicate some news sites were blocked starting on friday night. and obviously we have to say that given the new laws in place in russia since they started the war in ukraine, you definitely cannot speak out against the war in ukraine. and there have been examples where people have been punished for doing so. having said that, michael, it s extraordinary just having reviewed some of the russian newspapers and what s on them right now that they really did cover this straight up in a way. and that s been interesting to me in the sense that russians, if they wanted the
situation, that mr. biden had been in touch with the leaders of the uk, france, and germany. the common theme of all these high-level contacts has been to stress washington s unwavering support for ukraine, no matter how things played out in moscow. cnn s kevin liptak joins me now from washington with the very latest from there. tell us more about the d.c. reaction, what s going on at the white house? . reporter: certainly the big question i think at the white house, at the pentagon, is how this is going to affect the war in ukraine. because certainly on its face, it does seem like a distracted vladimir putin would be good for the ukrainians. but on the flip side, i think there is major concern among president biden s aides and certainly among the u.s. allies at what happens if putin decides to lash out because he sneeds to demonstrate some strength. and remember, this is a country with the largest stockpile of nuclear weapons in the world. so that has been sort of a fact that has b
his rebellion represented a huge threat to vladimir putin s grip on power. and according to ukraine s president, it even frightened him. translator: i will say it in russian the man from the kremlin is obviously very afraid and probably hiding somewhere, not showing himself. i am sure he is no longer in moscow. he calls somewhere and asks for something. he knows what he is afraid of because he himself created this threat. all evil, all losses, all hatred. he himself who spreads it. and the longer he can run between his bunkers, the more you will all lose, everyone who is connected with russia. for civilians across ukraine the chaos unfolding in russia seemed to change little about the war as russian troops launched more missile attacks across the country. ukrainian air defenses did intercept 41 out of 51 russian cruise missiles as well as two iranian made drones on saturday.