hi there, everyone. i m nicole wallace, thanks for being here with us. we ve got a lot of places you get your news today, we re glad you re joining us. four pm in the east, it s 11 pm in moscow. we re following breaking news this hour, with the latest on the revolt unfolding in russia. and we see news is confirming, yevgeny prigozhin is the head of the wagner group, which is a private mercenary army in russia, that s done a lot of the fighting in the war in ukraine. he has called for his moscow bound convoy to stand down for now. that s only after advancing to within 120 miles of the city of moscow. in the biggest threat to russian president vladimir putin s grip on power that we ve ever seen. prigozhin sent a voice note, signaling that the forces would stand down, saying the group understands, quote, the responsibility for spilling russian blood on one of the sides. we are turning back our convoys, and going back to field camps, according to the plan. this comes just hours a
No civilians stopped them. russian military didn t stop them. so what does that tell us? i think what we are going to find is the west including the pentagon, to include our intelligence agency, they are going to be dissecting this to see what it really says about this particular maneuver. the other thing is this gives the ukrainians an opportunity to continue to drive that wedge. to drive the wedge in the information campaign, about the distrust, the lack of moral, and the lack of teamwork throughout russia. i think that is what we should be looking at. general twitty, one of the things russian state media put out at the top of the hour was that the wagner troops who did not take up arms would be folded into the russian military. that seems implausible. at best. and combustible at worst. what do you make of what you are hearing from russian state
In general has been connecting this war. they have, probably when the tougher sector was responsible for an offensive that the russians were conducting over the course of the winter. they were the only sector that made any gains. these are hardened troops that, it s a combination of special ops ex military special operations forces. airborne forces. a whole lot of russian prisoners, that have been hardened in either years of experience in wars in the middle east and africa, or in this war in ukraine, fighting in his very, very tough sector. the rest of the picture that russia had the rest of the battlefield, the vast majority of the frontline, and didn t manage to make any gains over the course of their offensive. wagner gets a lot of credit for that. one other thing i d just like to make a point about, this is an enormously important period in this war.