the wagner group was a just fighting force inside ukraine. i m not saying it s going to lead to the demise of putin. that never has been the case and never will be, but this is a moment of uncertainty inside russia, not a moment of strength, in my view. if you have to shoot down the guy that was just fighting for you in ukraine, that is not a move of strength. that s a move of weakness. i want to go to josh lederman because he has some new information for us. what have you been able to find out? reporter: chris, we re seeing a new report from the russian state news agency, which is now saying that emergency services have told them that eight bodies of dead victims were found at this crash site of this plane. now, you remember we have been reporting and russian state news has been reporting that there were ten people who were on that passenger list, ten people who died in that plane crash.
now, of course at this point, nbc news cannot confirm that. there s a whole lot of information that is flowing right now that needs to be confirmed and really buttoned down, and that is obviously the case often in these types of situations where the earliest reports are sometimes either not correct or leave out key pieces of information, and so both russian officials and of course those in the united states and the rest of the world trying right now to figure out exactly what is the fate of yevgeny prigozhin, was he, in fact, on that plane. if he was and died in this incident, it would certainly have massive political implications for russians going forward. thank you so much for that josh lederman. thank you, come back to us if you get anything new. let s talk a little bit more about what we know, general, and again, i use that phrase actually pretty generally because, again, it s coming from state media. we saw the video that showed what appeared to be a plane on
can we expect to get any kind of information, legitimate, reliable information there, do you think? yeah, i think we ll be able to figure this out. we don t want to speculate. as we re sitting here. i m reading lots of telegram channels from various russians that i follow, and some are saying he landed safely in moscow. i don t think that to be true, but i don t know it to be true. by the way, sergey markoff, he s saying that the ukrainians shot this plane down. that s another talking point they re throwing into the mix. i suspect we ll know within hours if he s dead or not. this will not be a mystery that will go on for a long time. what we don t know, and i think we need to be careful about what we know and what we don t know, what we don t know is how this is playing inside russia, how this is playing inside the russian military. at first blush, of course, this is the tough guy putin taking
would have the bodies. while we re on live tv, i want to emphasize what you were talking about with josh. there s now telegram statements from russia saying there were two planes, and the second prigozhin plane has landed in moscow, so i just want to underscore, we don t know those bodies yet. but there are lots of other confirming things coming from russian telegram sources with alleged contacts to the wagner group confirming that mr. prigozhin was on the plane that fell out of the sky. all right, let s go to clint, because clint, you are an expert on this, an expert on the media, expert on disinformation. we re getting potentially conflicting reports. what do you make of what you have seen so far, and what should we have as a real caution here? i echo the same things in terms of both the ambassador and the general saying we have to use some caution. remember, prigozhin, one of the things that came out right after the uprising, he has lots of body doubles, fake passports,
military. do you have any insights in that or new reporting based on the last conversation since we last spoke? reporter: i think this, what we re trying to figure out now, was prigozhin on the plane that went down very suspiciously. there is video of a plane, according to and it seems to match with flight tracking data, that a plane took off. it reached over 20,000 feet. and then it suddenly stopped transmitting, and there is a video of a plane, allegedly this aircraft, plummeting from the sky. no control whatsoever. just dropping like a stone. apparently, however, there was more than one plane flying in some sort of convoy. they were flying together. and the second plane is either coming in to land or has landed, and apparently that second plane was also a prigozhin plane a