still today are continuing to fight. so there was also that skepticism of what this likely could mean. of course, this leader of the wagner group is very well known not only within russia, but within ukraine. the brutality that we ve seen on the front line, losses of life on both sides of the war, but this is by no means a man who ises not feared with the ukraines. that that being said, despite the fact that this partnership between russian president vladimir putin and evgeni pri yevgeny prigozhin evgeni prigozhin could have fallen apart. now that we ve seen he s pulled back his troops, there s a lot of questions, arthel, about how that all came to be. he said in a a video recently posting online that this effort to turn around was because he wanted to prevent any further bloodshed. but you have to wonder if these mercenaries were going toward moscow, what was it exactly that they had in mind? they assumed that there would be
also bring back palko. ryan, you have been in and out of russia since 1990 but you ve covered the country from inside for three decades. include into the war and ukraine broke out last year. i want to start the of. you have interviewed president putin s i want to get to that in a minute. if in practice president yevgen2 when he has spoken with the putin verse and could there have been a compromise offer? proxy one 100% but is spoken to president putin verse. there is no chance he could broker a deal between new guinea and letter putin without speaking with vladimir putin and getting his expressed support. in the relationship between alexander lukashenko the president of belarus and vladimir putin is clearly vladimir putin who is in charge. belarus is kind of like a client
said he would be returning his troops to the base camps to avoid bloodshed. we certainly know that probably meant to those troops that were at about 133 miles of moscow. now we are seeing new images from rostov-on-don which basically wagner forces took over earlier today we are seeing scenes the wagner forces there packing up. we could see a complete withdrawal of the wagner forces in russia and returned to ukraine in the activity there. the other interesting point that came out in the last half hour is there is one report that vladimir putin agreed to modifications in the russian military brass remember that is prigozhin s really big beef with both the defense chief of russia as well as the head of the commanders that something had to be done with them. he had a lot of complaints about
said that many agree with, that the invasion is illegal, that ukraine did not pose any threat to russia, that nato did not pose any threat to russia, that this was all vladimir putin s making, when will the balance of that weigh on vladimir putin s head and weigh on the russian people to do something about that dictator? if that s right. that s the most important question. because he s the highest level russian official to say that publicly. and a friend of putin. he s an ally of putin, and he s powerful because he has the wagner group. so who else is going to come out and talk like that? or does the fact that prigozhin reversed mean that the people are going to be quiet for a while? but people are thinking that. people are willing to say that publicly. and one thing putin cannot deny is the mounting casualties. russian people at home, the families who have lost their sons and their brothers, they
defense minister as well as the army chief of staff be fired. he hasn t been happy with the way the ukrainian war has been prosecuted. what does all this mean, and then what does that mean for, a, the war ukraine and, b, putin s tenure? there s a lot to unpack here. one thing i would note is that prigozhin in the last 36 hours said that russia and the russian government have lied to the russian people about the basis for the invasion of ukraine, that ukraine and nato never posed a threat to russians. he never said that before. as you mentioned, he d been critical of the russian military, but he d never gone that far in basically criticizing putin for ordering the invasion in the first place. i don t know how he completely retracts that and becomes friends and allies with putin again. if i were prigozhin, i would be worried about my life, because putin, he assassinates anyone who challenges him, and prigozhin has done that. even if there has been a truce