yevgeny prigozhin may possibly be on board that plane. they re waiting for information about whether or not he s on the second plane, which obviously would dramatically transform this story that we have been talking about for the last hour and change or so. in the meantime, we re also getting our first reaction from the u.s. government, which obviously has a major interest in figuring this out as well. we are learning president biden has been briefed on the situation, and also hearing from the national security council spokesperson, and if they re confirmed, no one should be surprised. she says the disastrous war in ukraine led to a private army marching on moscow, and now it would seem to this. chris. thank you for that, josh lederman. i want to bring in nbc s chief white house correspondent peter alexander who is joining us by phone. so the white house has finally issued a statement at least based on what we have just heard and what we would expect something fairly short, to the
on moscow. perhaps in the previous hours, yevgeny prigozhin may have convinced them he could take over and leave putin to adjudicate who he d like to stay the winner. putin had remained silent, but what we heard in the past hours makes no mistake here, yevgeny prigozhin is now a wanted man as well as thousands of fighters seasoned in battle across ukraine. they ee now targets of the russian military. what level of response will we see from the russian military is unclear. it s obvious at this stage some kind of clashes have begun. it seems and certainly the governor of the area has said that combat measures have indeed begun from the russian military side. but the big question really, wolf, in all of this, outside of the future of who is in charge of a nuclear power that s been, frankly, torn down militarily