know, michael, in the second week of july, and you can bet ukraine will be pushing even harder for membership in nato and also for military aid. paula, thank you there in ottawa for us. the u.s. president biden has spoken with the ukrainian president zelenskyy about the conflict in russia. some are amazed the conflict ended so quickly as they expected more violence. the abrupt ending to prigozhin s march on moscow was sooner and less violent than many expected, and they assessed there would be a lot 6 fighting and bloodshed as wagner forces pushed up from southern russia towards moscow, and instead there s little resistance from russia s army and security teams and others, and prigozhin
that s something that s been in the cards for a while there was a decree by the russian defense minister where he said all of the private military companies needed to have contracts with the russian army if they wanted to operate in the future. now yevgeny prigozhin or the wagner private company always said they were not going to do that. and that was also one of the things that escalated the feud between prigozhin and the russian military leadership. but all this is about a lot more than that. the private military company wagner is one thing. but yevgeny prigozhin owns a lot more than that. he has media holdings, like for instance the internet research agency which meddled heavily in the 2016 election. prigozhin was indicted for that. what happens to his media empire? then of course there is all his dealings in the middle east. oil fields in syria, in africa exploiting things like gold and diamonds, also training local forces there. so there are definitely still a lot of questions abo
here if the president is not prepared to stand firm and also the russian military leadership is incompetent, you could see mass desertions and an unwillingness of the part of the rank in file to follow orders. it s not so much the loss of wagner. yeah, and of course, following from prigozhin saying the reasons for the war, and those guys being the trenches were bogus, and that s not going to help morale. thank you soe much, sir. thank you. belarus s president emerges as the deal broker. and also, severe weather across the u.s. right now. a possible tornado in indiana left dozens of homes damaged. we will have more on that after the break.
rebellion was believed to be coming soon. intelligence officials briefed the gang of eight in congress. the leaders of both chambers from both parties as well as the head of the intelligence committees. here is congressman mike turner, the republican chairman of the house intelligence committee. this is not a weekend trip he is taking, taking his convoy, his military convoy up to moscow. there is a number of accomplices, including as we saw some of the russian people on the border with ukraine who clearly support the wagner group, in contrast to their support for the russian government. this is something that would have had to have been planned for a significant amount of time to be executed in the manner which it was. reporter: still, the speed and audacity of the move caught many by surprise, along with his sudden decision to stop his troops in their tracks. alex marquardt, cnn, washington. professor math you schmidt teaches national security at the university of new haven, joi
losing his troops to them says the whole war was started on false pretexts. the ukrainians did not provoke us. we decided to do it because we wanted to control them because we a whole bunch of oligarchs who had been making money in the donbas. he provides a kind of alternative narrative that is not one that looks good for putin. it completely contradicts putin s own narrative about ukraine being taken over by neo-nazis. and i wonder whether that will turn out to be, you know, if things go down badly for putin, i wonder if this becomes a central issue, which is that his own guy says the whole rational for this war is a lie. ukrainian president volodymyr zelenskyy has spoken with close allies about the turmoil in russia, saying the crisis is a result of russia s own aggression. translator: the longer