now. our second hour star welcome . i m yasmin vossoughian, if you just running, as welcome. if you re sticking with, us we re thankful for that. we have got a lot of developments in russia, as the head of the wagner group, yevgeny prigozhin, says his mercenary group is turning back and abandoning s march towards moscow. he made that announcement after the president of belarus claimed he held talks with prigozhin. i want to bring in nbc s met in standing back and trying. this math, you heard this thing firsthand. talk us through what you heard from prigozhin, the revelation of this, quote unquote, deal. thank you, yasmin. obviously, very shocking development, after what has been, as we ve discussed, very astonishing 24 hours in russia. we had another audio message from prigozhin. he speaks very intensely, always, part of his charm, for lack of better word. we saw that again in this latest message, also a little bit taking a step back. he s admitting that he stepping down
but you best believe, you can t take the italy out of an alfa romeo. (vo) it s red hot deal days from verizon! where you can get the incredible iphone 14 pro max on us with myplan. so you get exactly what you want and only pay for what you need. act now and get iphone 14 pro max on us when you switch. for a limited time only. it s your verizon. welcome back, everybody. fast moving and stunning turn of events today, as we re getting breaking new developments out of russia. putin s one-time key military
next few hours, days and weeks, to see how loyal the security services and the national guard in russia remain to putin, as that we ve seen some chunks in his armor. key complicated allies, iran in china. to russia. what do we know about any conversations, either those two leaders have, with president putin. and why they would be watching this play out so closely. well, these are two key allies of russia. these are two partners that they can rely on. i mean, we just saw secretary blinken went to china on a goodwill mission. before he even got back to the states, president biden was calling president xi a dictator. putin can rely on she not to call him out in public. he couldn t rely on him on support. he can rely on their iranians to keep providing them with drones to fight that war. it s a mutual relationship, the iranians, the last thing they
war in ukraine. you know, how this relationship has deteriorated is quite remarkable. one thing that i think we will be looking at, particularly, from the u.s. intelligence community, what is the degree of loyalty within the russian military, still, to prigozhin? to the wagner group forces? who really were considered the vanguard, the finest fighting force, for russia, which doesn t say much, but for russia in ukraine. so, elements of this deal we re gonna figure out what s going on. in the days to come. let me ask you this, i know vladimir putin s circle, historically, has been impenetrable. especially, by cia case officers. there s a real opening here for gaining entry into that circle, if you want to gather intelligence on a russian president who seems very weak right about now. i imagine those conversations are happening inside intelligence circles. oh, yasmin, you re right.
want to see is vladimir putin gone. they can rely on him for immense amounts of support, when it comes to countering the united states, for a vote on the security council. so, these guys have relationship, they rely on their own powers staying in place. it is not to their benefit to see somebody like putin go. they will be watching the situation very closely, especially given that they have a massive uprising in iran towards the end of the last year. very different what s happening here in russia. there was 25,000 armed troops going up against iran s supreme leader, or potentially, going up against him. the situations are also similar in many ways. and they rely on their own authoritarianism in both country. to prop one another up. ali arouzi, thank you for bringing that down. we appreciate it. i want to bring in now former u.s. ambassador to ukraine, bill taylor, to talk more about this. ambassador taylor, thanks for