Vehemently refutes. he was doing some reporting on the wagner group. what would move putin to do a deal, given prigozhin amnesty after this international humiliation of vladimir putin today? well, i think it s a sign of weakness, really nicolle. on the one hand, if prigozhin really was making a move for power in moscow, he may need to see if he could ve peeled off some of the other russian command structure. some other russian units or regional figures. that didn t really happen. we saw circling of the wagons, and some of russia s political leadership around putin. but at the same time, you also saw that russia, that is over, stretched this has its metal or couldn t really stop prigozhin from taking over the city of rostov, which is the main logistics hub for the war in ukraine. and potentially threatening moscow. so both of these guys were dealing with out the hand that they wanted. so for putin to climb down, and grant prigozhin amnesty, and
Fighting power, it s going to be significant blow to them, and precisely the time that ukraine has launched this counteroffensive. . with amped up nato weapons. since the invasion of ukraine, the first time around 2014, the wagner group has been increasingly essential to putin s policies. they were at the tip of the spear of his activities in syria. they ve been at the tip of a spear in some of his activities again influence in africa. and when the war started, we saw prigozhin come back to russia and ukraine, and really take command as a fiefdom within the russian command structure. it was wagner group fighters, including a lot of convicts who released on the condition that they fight with wagner, who are on those front lines in those grinding battles for the city of bakhmut for many months. prigozhin lost many, many men in that fight. he thought he, he s been saying on telegram another channels for sometime now, the russian ministry of defense was hanging him out to dry. not providin
Resources. they re going to have to buy them to secure wagner. it just makes the situation for ukraine a little bit easier. they could seize the momentum, the high morale on the ukrainian side. the disastrous morale on the rest inside. frankly, make some pretty significant gains. that s what i expect to see. ins. alex, could you just, looking back over the course of russia s disastrous efforts in ukraine, how much of what went wrong, and what went right, breaks down between the russian military and the wagner group? can you just sort of delineate who is in charge of what? sure, it s a little bit opaque. part of it drives from prigozhin, he was not receiving adequate support for tens of thousands of troops suffering for buckman, suffered tens of thousands of casualties because of the inadequate support he got from the minister of defense and the way that russia
On him and is marching to within 120 miles of moscow. what do you make of what we are not seeing? absolutely there is a period here of uncertainty. this is the most vulnerable period, in my opinion. if you take a look at this, there is two big things that are glowing red now within russia. number one there s distrust from the putin administration all the way down to the troops in the trenches. there s a lack of morale throughout as well. and there is a lack of teamwork throughout as well. so when you put all of that together, you can t trust, on your left, on your right, or wherever they may be in russia. whether or not you are going to be totally behind this war. that is what we are seeing here. it was an indicator, when you saw the wagner group headed to moscow.
Joint chairman of the joint chiefs, general mark milley, canceled a trip he was supposed to take to the middle east as well. every aspect of the administration really taking the last 24 hours to take stock of what s happened here. in terms of these latest developments about the wagner group retreating, the white house does not want to comment on any of that. u.s. officials are still assessing this. they re being very careful in their public posture. the vice president was actually traveling today in charlotte, north carolina, to give a major speech on the dobbs anniversary. also asked about this a couple of times. but decided not to weigh in. you can imagine, nicole, from your experience, knowing exactly how this goes. just because we re not seeing the president on camera at camp david or anything like that, doesn t mean he s not intensely working the phones. he did speak to the leaders of france, germany and the uk earlier. in a very short readout, the white house simply said, they ta