yesterday. but still so many questions about the wagner group s descent into russia. it ended almost as quickly as it began. yevgeny prigozhin s mercenaries got within 120 miles of moscow, the only to turn back to the races after a deal was brokered to prevent the armed rebellion. a spokesperson for the kremlin saying the wagner group leader will avoid prosecution and be exiled in belarus. his troops will be given the option to join russian military forces. prigozhin seen leaving russia last night as crowds cheered him on. meanwhile, new reporting revealing that u.s. spy agencies had indications, quote unquote, days earlier that prigozhin has been stockpiling weapons with plans to take on russian defense officials. i m obviously not going to comment on intelligence matters. what i can say is this, i think it s been no secret that many people over many months and that these tensions were rising, they were brewing. prigozhin was already saying extraordinary things about russi
many people here know what chaos looks like. they remember the 19 90s. some people are thinking i don t want that. we don t know, right? we don t know. anybody who s telling you that they know what s going to happen in the coming weeks is lying, essentially. keir simmons, we thank you. i will talk to you in our next hour. we ve got a lot more questions for, you keir. stay close. we are following some new reporting on how u.s. officials have been tracking these developments. american officials knew as early as wednesday that wagner group leader yevgeny prigozhin was preparing to take military action against russia and held briefings with members of the biden administration during the week. i want to get right to that with nbc s allie raffa who s outside the white house for us with more on this. walk us through this reporting and how they chose to handle these developments. yeah, yasmin. you play that clip of secretary of state anthony blinken at the top of the show saying this was
Wagner forces moving down the am for highway towards moscow. frankly absolutely stunning scenes we. i think another, to answer your question, what has been around today are some national guards on the street. but nothing like what you might have expected a short time ago this weekend. so, you know, the normality is what is surprising, honestly. and then i think also it s important to kind of mentioned those scenes in the city 800 miles from here where wagner it took over and the russian southern command for a while running in the russian operation in ukraine. as wagner left and as prigozhin left, apparently to go in exile in belarus, the crowds were cheering and taking selfies and recording videos. we ve got those images. we can see that. the kremlin can see that as
well, we don t really know what happened here in terms of whether putin told his military to hold back, whether he told his air force to hold back. what we do, know it is kind of odd that that southern headquarters was seized by the wagner group and no shots fired at least the russian soldiers maintain their guard there and not allow that to happen. and so, i agree with you. there is something here that we just don t know. but to see the russian populous give favor to the wagner group as they moved into rostov and continued on that route towards moscow, that was hugely telling. i think in a couple of weeks and weeks to come, we will start to hear more about what went on in terms of the russian military. were they in favor of this?
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