because of an insurrection led by the leader of the wagner mercenaries that ended nearly as soon as it started. an apparent clash between wagner and russian troops which was followed by a fire at that oil refinery you see on your screen there. under the deal done, the kremlin says wagner troops will not face any legal action, but they ll sign new contracts with russia s defense ministry while moscow will drop its charges against prig prigozhin, who will go to belarus. wagner s leader says he agreed to that in order to avoid bloodshed. translator: therefore, realizing all the responsibility for the fact that russian blood will be shed from one of the sides, we turn our columns around and leave in the opposite direction to the field camps, according to the plan. the kremlin says it doesn t know where prigozhin is right now. what you see there is video of people cheering as he left ross stor-on-don where his troops seized military facilities on saturday. officials now tell c
good eveningmism i m anderson cooper in new york. this is special coverage of the extraordinary and still confusing events we have been reporting on for the past 24 hours out of russia and of what will be a critical day ahead for vladimir putin. what we witnessed over the last 24 hours appears to have been the most serious threat to putin s hold on power in decades. at this hour we know a lot, but it s important to point out there is a lot that is not known. for instance, what will be the fate of the man in the back seat of this suv, prigozhin, cheered by some as he appeared to be leaving the southern russian town, his mercenary force had just occupy. this video taken just hours after he called off his mercenaries from their push toward moscow and agreed to a deal brokered by russia s ally, belarus. translator: therefore realizing all the responsibility for the fact that russian blood will be shed from one of the sides, we turn our columns around and leave in the opposite d
pinocchio moment. when pinoeko thought he wasn t a puppet but a real boy. and that s what happened to prigozhin last year when he unexpectedly realized he s becoming very popular and he loved that moment. you can tell in the videos he was dressed up like a wagner fighter. he has no military experience, not an actual fighter but certainly someone dressed him up like one and he talked very tough in all these video. what happens to him now? what obviously there s a lot we do not know about what this deal is, if there really is even a deal, if prigozhin will go to belarus, how he will live there, what happens to wagner. i mean it s unanswerable, but what do you think what happens in the next 48 hours, in the next weeks or months? i won t pretend that i know, but i ve been speaking to a lot
place for him. i wouldn t go above the first floor of any building. so this is strange. i think there s much of this we don t understand yet, and it certainly bears watching. what do you think what do you think happens to the wagner forces? because, i mean, they ve played a critical role in i think they have in the war in ukraine. prigozhin certainly has portrayed it as such. they ve been allowed to operate. they were the ones recruiting all those convicts to be canon fodder and just go into the meat grinder around bakhmut. what happens now to them? well, you wonder if part of this part of the motivation for this greet at least on putin s part is to somehow split it up. and the irony here is the wagner group has been the most effective fighting force for the russians in ukraine.
agreed to fight for wag nar. what happens now to the russian side? that s a good question. and we do know that the wagner mercenaries who had fought for months to try to capture bakhmut, after they declared they had captured what was left of that city, recall it was basically destroyed, they then made a big show, and prigozhin himself made a big show of withdrawing from the city and handing it over to the russian ministry of defense and the regular armed russian forces. so we don t know where they ve been really since then and how active they have been on the front lines, which part of the front lines they ve been active on until all of a sudden we saw them packing up their gear and essentially invading russia and launching a mercenary mutiny. that s something i never thought we d be reporting on. but there are now big questions. were the ukrainians able to exploit any of this confusion yesterday? it all finished in just a day, so i don t know if this will provide the ukrainians enou