seidule private military companies have to start making contracts with the russian defense ministry. so that at least as far as the structure is concerned seems to be the way that things are going. of course, wagner is different than all other private military companies in russia and that it s gigantic, was the most prominent and had its own command and control structure with commanders close to prigozhin who were themselves also quite well known in russia and certainly in places around the world. people like, for instance, dmitry utkin who did prigozhin s bidding in syria when it came to supporting the rune forces there. some oil dealings as well. commanders who were doing the dealings in africa. what happens to them is completely unclear. so right now we are still sort of in a situation we will have to see how this plays out. is there going to be a wagner private military company in the future? is yevgeny prigozhin going to play a role in the wagner
cnn s ivan watson has more now on the deal and how the crisis unfolded. reporter: a weekend of chaos and trauma in russia. mercernaries declared a mutiny and then called it off in under 24 hours. translator: those who destroyed our guys today with tens of thousands of lives of russian soldiers had be punished. i ask no one to put up any resistance. justice for the troops will be restored and then justice for all of russia. reporter: yevgeny prigozhin issued a call for rebellion. the head of the wagner mercenary group accusing top russian military commanders of gross mismanagement of the war in ukraine. then prigozhin released video of an alleged russian airstrike on a wagner camp in ukraine demanding revenge. russia s defense ministry denied the attack and soon russia s top
to see how they integrate. i think they can at certain levels, but in other cases i think the command and control structures are quite different and that s going to be difficult nor them to overcome, especially talking with the ex-convicts that the wagner group has. they will be a lot harder to integrate than the normal people that were a part of the wagner group before the ukraine invasion. when we last spoke current leighton, you described prigozhin and putin as two very delusional men trying to exercise as much power as they can. how much of this is a situation of putin s own making, the blunders that he committed over these past many months? almost 100%, wolf. this is not only putin s war. but this is also really every single as peg of this is really what putin has been envisioning. he has tried to make this a very easy military operation. that failed almost immediately
pleitgen in berlin. with prigozhin headed to belarus, what happens to the mercenary force that he actually built, fred? yeah, i think that s completely unclear at this point in time. one of the things that the russian leadership in the form of dmitry peskov said yesterday is because of the achievements on the battlefield by the wagner group and one of the things that we saw yesterday on the ground in that town in rostov south of russia the wagner fighters on the ground there were respected not just by russian soldiers that they were around in that main headquarters but the people on the street there. so clearly there is a good deal of respect for the toughness of these wagner fighters and some of the achievements from the russian point of view that they had on the battlefield. so the russians are saying that these people can now apply to join the russian military. it s one of the things that has been the plan for a couple of weeks by the russian military leadership, by sergei shoigu
concerned is clear right now. there is a unity of command right now where everything is with the russian military and the wagner group that special status seems to be gone. unclear what the future of the wagner private military company is going to be. one of the things that we have to point out again and again that the war in ukraine, they are very present there, but they have a giant footprint around the world when you look at african countries and the middle east as well. fred, you are joining us from berlin right now. i was just there a couple of weeks ago. i know germany is a key nato ally. they are watching what s going on in russia very, very carefully. what s been the reaction so far? it s very interesting. and you are right. it is a key nato ally. the germans in the last couple of months have definitely stepped up their engagement to support ukraine. obviously, this is something that has huge reverberations for that. i think one of the things we have seen from countries int