While wagner chief yevgeny prigozhin was on the rampage against officials in moscow, officials in kyiv were largely silent, following napoleon s advice, never to interrupt your enemy while he is making a mistake. briefly, many ukrainians entertained the hope that civil war or chaos in russia would lead to an early end to war, but prigozhin s sudden about-face dashed those hopes. sunday ukrainian presidential adviser said in an interview he was hoping for something more concrete, perhaps a civil war in russia. he said he was still confident that will eventually happen. while attention was diverted away from the front, the fighting went on. sunday, ukrainian officials claimed their forces had seized a kilometer, a kilometer stretch of trenches near bakhmut.
This, and i think, matthew, we just saw matthew s reports, this just doesn t happen, even in the depth when the ukrainian war started and there was a lot of shock throughout russia that they would attempt to invade ukraine, and it s quiet that nobody decided to speak and explain what the deal was and when they would see prigozhin, just extraordinary. as the sun comes up in moscow, they should start to think about what the plan will be today. amid the chaos in russia, perhaps opportunity across the border for ukraine. yeah, this is the most interesting part, michael. many people have said perhaps as the counter offensive goes on in ukraine that that is an opportunity. but, you know, this opportunity in terms of really sensing and trying to capitalize on russia s weakness goes much further for
reporter: alexandr lukashenko rules belarus like a personal fiefdom, president since its creation in 1994, he brooks little opposition. dubbed europe s last dictator, lukashenko has come to be defined by his fealty to his powerful neighbor, russia s president vladimir putin, transforming belarus into a nearby vassal state. putin used lukashenko and belarus to help launch his 2022 invasion of ukraine, driving tanks over belarus border towards kyiv and using belarusian skies to bomb ukrainians. translator: we will never be enemies of russia, and we will never look disprovingly at russia. this is the country closest to us, the people closest us to. i think that while we re in power, we will stick to this tendency. if it were otherwise, it would be like in ukraine.
Or not yevgeny prigozhin, when he goes to exile in belarus, will retain any sort of control over that or if other solutions will be found by the russian leadership. fred pleitgen, cnn, berlin. ukrainian president volodymyr zelenskyy has spoken with allies over the weekend. that includes u.s. president joe biden, canadian prime minister justin trudeau and polish president andrew duda. there was an agreement on what was happening and why and how toe respond. he also thanked the u.s. for continued support. translator: now the russian occupiers are suffering losses, which we need. each of their losses is a long-term strengthening of freedom. we also discussed further strengthening of ukrainian troops. and i thank our partners for understanding our needs, long-range needs. i m especially grateful to president biden and the united states for the reliability of patriots. we discussed the strengthening of artillery and other things.
Organization as to with regard to life. i don t think it s so much the case of losing wagner, and they have a case of sizeable troops, but they took heavy losses in trying to take back area, and to what extent the russian rank and file and military lose faith and confidence in the senior military leadership, and secondly in putin s leadership, and wherever they want to continue to fight the war. it could be you have a lot of poorly trained soldiers that are sitting here and thinking why are we doing this, why are we