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
in handling the situation. with the wagner pmc. i wouldn t say doesn t necessarily look great on the kremlin. or essentially, if you read between the lines here, we re seeing what appears to be an admission that putin did not speak with prigozhin digger directly. he wasn t even naming prigozhin in public. it just kind of, it s hard to see that this is actually over. the fundamental issues at play here, apparently, are unresolved. prigozhin went into this with some very, in the russian context, incendiary, i would argue, unforgivable rhetoric. questioning the entire war. things that anybody else in russia said, could land them in jail. in the way he did it really inflamed, and will uncanny to inflame, nationalist pro war sentiments. this is a problem that the kremlin is, i think, increasingly struggling to manage. especially as prigozhin has become more vocal in recent weeks and months. with these criticisms of how the war has been operated. there s this sense in russia,