hello, everyone.

this is our special coverage out of russia. the head of wagner group, the leader released a statement. >> therefore, realizing all the responsibilities for the fact that russian blood will be shed from one of the sides we turn our columns and move in the opposite field of the camps. >> officials claim their president had reached a deal with the wagner boss to halt his troops. earlier, he said his private army seizeded control of russian military facilities in it two critical cities. that is half way on the road to moscow.

president putin called the actions a betrayal and stab notice back to the russian people. and he warned anyone who followed pergosian will pay a price. >> these are bulldogs and gangsters and the fight is way out into the open. it is a very serious one. we have full coverage of the breaking news. we have cnn chief international security correspondent with us nick paton walsh, national security reporter natasha bertrand. nick, i guess the question now is not only where prigozhin will take the forces back to, where are the field camps? and do we think he can survive this blatant challenge to putin? ? >> yeah. look, it's not really in putin's russia where you march your

armed insurrection to where he claimed was 200 kilometers outskirts of the capital and say, you know what i don't really want to shed any blood here. i'm going to just turn around. clearly, i think we'll see more fallout from this. quite whether or not the president that vladimir putin treats with contempt half the time somehow magically parachuted into this and intervened to calm everybody down. we simply don't know. but at this point, obviously, you have prigozhin marching into the capital with what is presumably not a big enough force to military occupy is a bad idea. he certainly made his point throughout the day in which, i'm sure, the russian elite may have been wondering quite how saturday would indeed end. now there are various suggestion that's perhaps part of the discussions may have involved promises to ultimately remove the russian top brass that prigozhin is reigning against for months.

we haven't had any official indication towards that at all. where do prigozhin's troops go now? they swept almost unopposed, they said without firing a shot over the last night of them packing up and leaving. but to an applause, frankly, from some of the locals. you can make what you want of that. show of limited public support. but we had an extraordinary 24 hours for vladimir putin's grip on russia. things you would never possibly have conceived could happen before this war began. shaking the notion that he is the one calling the shots here. we'll have to see what he now does, does he pardon prigozhin, a man he said was behind an armed insurrection. he said he would face inevitable punishment. what does he do with the well seasoned fighters of wagner? they've been essential on the front lines? does he offer them immunity and send them back to that war? and what does you do with the top brass?

prigozhin had them in his sights. we're looking at a longer-term issue for vladimir putin's authority and ultimately question as to whether he ends this episode now having to accept that prigozhin calls so many shots in rush ysia. startling times. that's going to be impacted significantly, too. >> well, exactly. and those groups have had, if any russian successes, they come at those, you know, the hands of the wagner group. nick, thank you very much. natasha, the u.s. and nato allies are really, really, you know, hoping that there would be some internal challenge to putin. what do we know about that? >> what we're told is u.s. intelligence officials did see some signs that prigozhin was

planning to launch a major challenge against russian military leadership. it is unclear what that challenge would look like, when it would hop. but we're told that u.s. officials briefed congressional leaders, known as the gang of eight in recent days on these concerning movements. they were seeing by prigozhin and wagner concerning military buildup and movements towards russia. it is unclear what actually might take place. u.s. officials were pretty caught off guard by the speed with which this all unfolded late friday night and into, of course, to day. they convened emergency meetings, international trips were canceled by the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff as well as the national security adviser. they have been huddling all day here .

. think think one of the questions is whether one of prigozhin's plan is to depose vladimir putin or whether he

just wanted to make a point. he's been railing against russia's military leadership including other russian leaders for months and months now about what he believes is their incompetent execution of the war in ukraine. and, so, the question is always how far is prigozhin willing to go? does he have the support of vladimir putin or he is willing to challenge vladimir putin directly? that is something that u.s. officials just didn't know. and right now, of course, they are hopeful that this doesn't create the kind of instability in russia that would compromise, for example, russia's nuclear weapons. that say big concern that u.s. officials have. it is a nuclear state. so, what does this instability mean for the country and the broader region? vladimir putin obviously is not the friend of the united states. so, on the other hand, of course, you know, there was a consideration here about whether he could be deposed and whether this could cause a big distraction, of course, from the war in ukraine that could allow ukraine to make a military breakthrough. >> can i just throw something out of left field? not too left field, i hope.

but you've been covering also, you know, the visit of modi. we know secretary of state blinken has been going to china. it must give those two leaders pause about the longevity of the, you know, of vladimir putin. >> what do you think? >> i think this is definitely part of the reason why u.s. officials were so surprised. it seemed like everything happened just so fast and with such little resistance. they've been watching really closely here. so how little russian troops actually oppose the occupation of wagner forces, for example. this is something that international leaders will be looking at to see and he has support of the military and population. is this something that he can

really control seeing as how wagner group just managed to march right in. it's going to raise real questions on the international stage. >> joining us now is the former u.s. ambassador to ukraine. ambassador, if prigozhin was headed to moscow, what do you think was going to happen when he got there? >> if he was going to moscow, he would demonstrate he can enter the city and perhaps even seize control as some of the centers of power and ministry of defense. this is his spat has been with others first and foremost. >> yep. >> i don't know, you know, it's all -- it all seems to have deflated in terms of prigozhin's march and he turned around. none of us know how this is going to play out. but did you -- i mean, did you -- it is significant that vladimir putin for the first time, you know, quoted the claps of the russian empire in 1917?

i mean, he made reference to the potential threat to the russian state. in a way that he hadn't done in before during this war. >> correct. it was very clear he was spooked. where he can understand why owe was spooked. he launched an unpopular war. and he had a man who was considered something of a hero for being more successful on the battlefield in ukraine. sharply criticizing the reasons for going to war. and demonstrating he has his own independent power. >> so you, ambassador, how do you think this is going to be interpreted there in ukraine in terms of planning going ahead or is it just, you know, this was a 24-hour blip and we're back to the plan for the counter offensive? >> this is not a 24-hour blip. it's like prigozhin is the person who looked behind the screen at the wizard of oz and

saw the great and terrible oz way a frightened man. vladimir putin has been diminished. he declared this as treachery. yet, now, there seems to be some sort of understanding when prigozhin goes back to doing what he was doing. so, prigozhin has emerged as a second source of power in russia. he cannot be controlled by the strong man of the kremlin. that's remarkable. and as for the impact on the battlefield, certainly this is demoralizing to russian troops. of course, they've been demoralized by their terrible treatment and the bad generalship and ukraine's success with the counter offensive last year. and, of course, wagner pulled out the forces after they took bakhmut although not taking it very well. and ukrainians understand this. so i suspect this will add a little impetus to a counter offensive which has not gone badly but has not gone as well as some people expected. >> how do you now think?

you're an ambassador. you're a diplomat. how do you think this is going to play out? >> how do you see the next steps in view of what you just been talking about the impact of what just happened over the last 24 hours? >> well, at one possibility is that the pause we're seeing as prigozhin stopped his advance is that they'll be just kind of a standoff. but we very much still see two contending parties. the second alternative is, again, you know, prigozhin -- he doesn't just turn -- he doesn't stop his movement. he goes back to the south. maybe back into ukraine and maybe not. he demonstrateded he is an independent force that cannot be brought to heal. what does that say about putin's authority and his ability to exact his will? certainly, what does that say to russian soldiers fighting in

ukraine? >> exactly. and what about alexander? i don't know if he was in power when you were ambassador there. but we know that he is essentially second fiddle to putin. >> we don't know who initiated that activity. since the failed -- since the peculiar election in belaruse in august of 2020 which he lost and remained in power, he is increasingly under vladimir putin's thumb. this may have been one service that he was willing to provide for putin which the give him a measure of autonomy. we'll have to see. but as for what he told

prigozhin, i'm not certain. maybe what he told prigozhin was that, you know, okay. you demonstrated you're not under the thumb of the ministry of defense which is what the russian regulation said. wagner soldiers had to sign up for the ministry of defense. you can maintain independent position and going back to doing what you were doing. he felt that maybe that was enough. it may well have been that deadline for the soldiers to sign up under the ministry of defense which was july 1 which is what prompted him to move. >> yeah. he does seem to indicate, frankly, in his statement in the latest audio that it was, you know, the demands to what he said disband the private wagner group, ie, put them under the military command. and, yeah. so that does seem to whabbe wha played into it. ambassador, thank you so much. >> my pleasure. thank you. straight ahead, new reporting from inside ukraine. what president zelenskyy claims russia's president putin is doing right now.

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correspondent joining us live now. so ben, what is the president zelenskyy saying? >> president zelenskyy issued the nightly statement. but that was before news came out that prigozhin had decided to turn around and go home. what we did hear, of course, because keep in mind, ukrainians were transfixed while this crisis was unfolding. he suggested that president putin is hiding away. >> translator: they are very afraid and hiding somewhere, not showing himself. i'm sure he is no longer in moscow. >> and, of course, now the

ukrainians are sort of back to where they were 24 hours ago. pondering the next move in their counter hoifive. n -- counter-offensive. we heard according to the deputy defense minister in ukraine that in the area they have made some progress launching attacks from a variety of directions around that city which the russians took in may. it does appear in that area they're making progress. now, until now, the progress of this counter-offensive has been relatively modest. they announced several days ago that they managed to take back eight villages, 44 square miles. went to some of those villages in the middle of the week. pretty small. it is not a major gain and territory in the grand scheme of

things. they were concentrating troops and ammunition for a major push against russian forces. >> ben, i wonder is ukraine acknowledging perhaps it's looking for any new openings or, you know, an advantage as a result of seeing this russian power struggle, this in fighting out in the open? >> it certainly indicated the depth of divisions within the russian sort of elite writ large. we've been well aware of the differences between prigozhin and his wagner group on the one hand. and the leadership of the defense ministry on the other. the way that it happens within the last 24 hours or so was more

rapid and dramatic than anyone could have expected. they're hoping this is going to have the divisions are going to have a ripple effect on the front lines. the lack of clarity around the situation in moscow is going have an effect on among the troops. at this point, it is hard to say. we spoke to troops on the front line. and they said that despite all of the news coming out of moscow and with the control by prigozhin of basically in command and control center. russian troops were still resisting ukrainian and they didn't seem to be any disorder among the front lines.

you're going to have to see if this is a temporary or 24-hour freak incident or long term effects on the ability of russian forces. >> indeed. ben, thank you so much. >> u.s. president biden and other top u.s. officials are monitoring the situation closely this afternoon. let's bring in our reporter live from the white house. what you are learning about the approach the white house is taking? >> i asked the white house moments ago whether there are any changes or updates now that we know the wagner chief said his forces are turning around. and the statement i got is that they are continuing to monitor the situation. that has been the line from the white house over the last several hours. now, we know that this morning president biden spoke with the leaders of france, germany, and the uk. and in a readout from the white house, they said that, quote, the leaders discussed the situation in russia.

they also affirm their unwaivering support for ukraine. now, president biden has gone to camp david, the presidential retreat where he is joined with national security adviser jake sullivan. this is a fast-developing situation and one he'll be consistently briefed on. but the white house has been cautious about how much they weigh in here as they continue to wrap their arms around this situation. now, we should note that as early as january, american officials had noticed that there was a power struggle between wagner group and the russian government. they believed there would be mounting tensions in the months to come. we're seeing that play out now. it did play out perhaps more quickly than anticipated. but, of course, the key strategy here for the white house is to stay in close touch with partners and allies. not only president biden but also his top officials including secretary of state anthony blinken who spoke with g-7

allies and eu counterparts earlier today. so president biden and vice president harris being continually briefed throughout the day on the evolving situation including now with the latest news. so, we'll wait to hear if we get more updates in the hours to come. fred? >> all right. bring it us to when you do. thank you so much. all right. much more continuing coverage on the major developments in russia. stay with us. only at vanguard you're more than just an investor you're an owner. that means your priorities are ours too.

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wagner head prigozhin is known as putin's chef and has a long history with rush why's president. rising to prominence by winning lucrative contracts with the kremlin. cnn's senior international correspondent has more. >> reporter: he's long been a well-known leader around the

world, now yevgeny prigozhin is a wanted man in russia as well. he's often group of fight serz pitted against the russian military leadership and prigozhin is suddenly moscow's public enemy number one. vladimir putin calling for prigozhin's group to lay down their arms. >> translator: all those who deliberate choose the path of treachery, who prepare an armed mutiny and chose the path of blackmail and terrorist methods will face punishment and answer to the law and to our people. >> reporter: he may now be something of a nemesis to vladimir putin but it was his decade's long relationship with the russian president that allowed prigozhin to establish his own militia, the wagner group. wagner served as a private army doing controversial jobs that often not even russia's military could do. prigozhin, a former prisoner himself and self-styled hard man from st. petersberg used wagner.

they atracked wagner to africa, sudan, mozambique, ukraine and syria. along the way, prigozhin enriched himself. rights groups acrossed wagner of hor irving violence like this -- hor horrific violence, like this, slashing the hands and feet of a prisoner in 2017. the man reportedly died after his ordeal. the images are disturbing like so many others attributed to his group. for many years, prigozhin denied the existence of wagner. the work best done in secret. a master of mismaking, prigozhin and wagner who set up the notorious russian troll farm designed to send disinformation around the presidential election. when the fighters took to the battlefield in eastern ukraine and began winning battles, prigozhin seemed to want the spotlight. >> the wagner operation began on october 8th, 2022, in order to

give the battered russian army an opportunity to recover. our guys stormed the city for 224 days. there were only wagner private forces here. >> reporter: the tactics including flinging poorly trained troops into the meat grinder of war in ukraine's east. suffering a shocking number of casualties in an attempt to overwhelm defenses. will prigozhin rubbed his victories in the face of russia's flailing defense department. venting fury at the haphazardness and ill planning of russia's illegal invasion. and chastising the russian top brass mocking defense minister. >> translator: you think you are the masters of this life? you think can you dispose of their lives? you think because you have warehouses full of ammunition that you have that right? >> now the kremlin's secret weapon is maybe the biggest

threat. >> thank you so much for that reporting. right now, global leaders are reacting to the escalating situation in russia. we'll bring you that next. of what big wireless does. they charge you a lot. we charge you a little. they put their names on arenas. wewe put ours on my lower back. so naturally when they announced they'd be raisising their prics due to inflation, we decidided to deflate our pris due to not hating you. and if this were one of their ads, they'd end it here with a "happy customer". so we'll end ours with an angry goat. oh h-ho, look at the angry goat. the first time you connected your godaddy website and your store was also the first time you realized... well, we can do anything. cheesecake cookies? the chookie! manage all your sale from one place with a partner thatlways puts you first. (we did it start today at godaddy.com

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back to our breaking news. just hours after vowing to march on moscow, and challenged the kremlin's military leaders perhaps even putin himself, the head of russia's military group says the forces are standing down and no longer on that road to moscow. [ applause ] >> this new video into cnn shows the wagner forces parentally being cheered by residents of a russian town they had recently taken control of. russian president vowed to punish the armed rebellion led by the mgroup. with me now is a staff writer for "the new yorker." also author of several books, of course, on russia and its leader

including the man without a face, the unlikely rise of vladimir putin. so, marcia, regardless of whether or not, you know, prigozhin, the head of the wagner group, has truly decided to stop his march or whatever happened to change this, how in your mind is this crisis impact putin and his, you know, iron grip on russia? >> well, putin is in a very strange position now. in order to negotiate with prigozhin, he had to enter a space where he have two completely contradictory forces pushing down on him. on one hand, he has to appease prigozhin, give him something because he's wanted basically to if not in job title then in spirit to take charge of the war effort. because he thinks that the defense minister is incompetent and out of his depth. not unreasonable. on the one hand, putin has

probably promised prigozhin not just immunity from prosecution, the cases against him have already been dropped, but also probably more autonomy and more say so in the world. on the other hand, putin needs to prevent something like this from happening again. so he needs to crack down on prigozhin, on prigozhin supporters and prigozhin's potential supporters. these are things that are in extreme contradiction. he's going to have to make choices about them. most likely he will choose an extreme crackdown. >> and what does that look like? i mean, i don't know whether you notice it or whether i did because i don't know any better, but i feel that, you know, putin had never in this whole war said anything like that this one action was about as close to, you know, bringing down the russian state is what happened in the uprising of 1917. >> you know what? this may be the first true thing that putin has said in 23 years.

this is, in fact, as close as anything has come to threatening the russian empire. as we knew it in 1917 and as we know it now. a crackdown looks very much like the crackdown on belaruse. not coincidentally. the president of belaruse and so-called president of belaruse negotiated whatever they negotiated with prigozhin for now. it means mass arrests. it probably means shutting russia off from the world wide web or at least blocking widely accessible instruments of communication such as youtube and telegram. it also means another giant step forward to soviet-style totalitarianism. >> given that, you heard reports from russia all day today that flights out of moscow were fully booked. people were trying to leave in

any which way they could and from other areas of russia as well. how do you assess the support or not that putin still has? by and large, whatever the resistance internally to the war if it exists is the silent either minority or majority. how do you assess of what is happening inside moscow? >> well, it's very hard to tell why people are leaving, right? i he don't think they can tell themselves fully why they're leaving. some people are leaving because they fear they are iron curtain and some are leaving because they fear violence. we saw in moscow the place of the large southern city that prigozhin's forces briefly took control of earlier today. we saw people lining up at train stations seems really reminiscent of what we saw train stations in ukraine a year and a half ago as people were fleeing

violence or potential violence. people were fleeing what looked like civil war. that doesn't tell us very much about how people feel about putin. in fact, nothing does. including people themselves. in totalitarianism, there is no public and there is no opinion. what has happened, however, is that prigozhin has for the first time in mshgsany, years created sense of plurality of active leaders in russia. it's not just putin. in real terms, he challenged his monopoly on power and his monopoly on force. but in political terms, he has challenged his monopoly on the narrative, his monopoly on politics. he has created something that resembles public space. if only for 24 hours. this is huge. this is hugely destabilizing for putin's regime. >> i guess how do you think putin will spin this power

struggle? and related to that, one of his key allies, former mp, you know, member of putin's party, told me earlier that, you know, putin had to make this deal or, you know, turn around from prigozhin because he just couldn't afford yet another front against him. certainly not an internal front. >> right. that's very interesting. putin's allies have been some of them have tried to sort of speak out both sides of their mouths. a lot of them, most of them have to stay silent. they don't know what to say in this situation. they're not getting clear narratives from the kremlin. we don't know how he's going to spin this. he called him a traitor. the other private army commander in putin's service called this a knife in putin's back or a knife in somebody's back. we assume the somebody is putin.

so, it's going to be spun as an act of betrayal. but mostly, you know, totalitarian propaganda doesn't rest on clear narratives. it rests on creating a chaotic information space. a sense of dread. a sense of being under siege. in this sense, prigozhin's insurgency isn't necessarily destructive to the propaganda. a different question is what does this do to putin's war ne effort in ukraine? if prigozhin is able to weaken it, that, in turn, can have an impact on what happens to the propaganda machine. >> thank you very much. earlier today i spoke with the professor of international affairs at the news school and the great granddaughter of the former soviet premier kruschev. she raise serious questions

about putin's leadership. here is what she told me when she joined me from moscow. >> i'm not entirely sure what prigozhin, how prigozhin can escape this. there is a criminal investigation. putin is a man who does not take betrayal. and so that probably is something that they would have -- all will play out later on. i just spoke to a variety of people around me in the bulling and there is a sigh of relief. and one older woman said, well, i'm sure -- i was sure it was going to resolve very quickly. of course, who is that prigozhin to challenge putin? and so, of course, he's the greatest president. so, i actually think that if it is very bad for putin. it does show how this whole apparatus is basically being

very, very thinly still stick together and almost falling part. but i would also imagine it might strengthen putin's hand a little bit because exactly that. i mean, he was able to somehow do something like that, turning proout vladimir putin around. and that will be good enough for now to keep the power. i think that is basically what he is doing with all his words and all his actions. >> so, just go back a little bit in history and see if it's relevant at all to what is happening in the kremlin right now. you said when a leader is challenged in this way, even though he gets out of it and, you no hknow, people could see there are chifrpnks in the armo. it could strengthen them. do you that i is a possibility? what are the historic references

in russia? >> i mean, russia, as you know, is opaque power. history is only a guide to something greed can never be exactly the same. but also for the putin entourage, and we've seen it, there is not a mystery that the things are going badly. there is not a mystery that he's not as strong as he appears to say he is. it is more important that he's there because none of them have enough power to take over and undermine the rest. so somebody goes up. somebody goes down. and those who go down cannot afford to go down. so, that has been going on. i think that's kind of prigozhin and his -- i'm sure that people behind him are close to putin who was able -- were able to take advantage of. >> and we'll be back in just a moment after a break.

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welcome back. the white house is closely watching this developing power struggle in russia today. let's bring in cnn's priscilla alvarez at the white house. what are you hearing about their approach? >> reporter: well, they're watching closely as this unfolds on the ground. president biden is being briefed regularly. he just arrived at camp david. his presidential retreat, where he is with national security adviser jake sullivan. now sullivan was supposed to be on a trip in europe but canceled plans given the situation. and he is now briefing the president. earlier today we also learned from the white house that president biden spoke with the

leaders of france, germany, and the united kingdom. the three of them have been closely aligned when it comes to the war in ukraine and discussed the evolving situation in russia today. now, we know that as of early january, u.s. officials had been monitoring this internal struggle between the mercenary wagner group and the russian government. now officials believe that these tensions would mount, though it perhaps happened more quickly than they anticipated, and it is what we are seeing unfold now. so the key part of the strategy for the white house has been being in regular contact with allies and partners. it's not just president biden either, his top officials including secretary of state antony blinken and defense secretary austin have been talking to countries, blinken in particular. we know from the state department, spoke with gs7 allies and eu counterparts earlier this morning. this is a top priority for this white house as they monitor the situation on the ground, and what could be ramifications for

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happening now, an apparent -- an apparent, stunning turnaround in russia. the head of the mercenary wagner group, yevgeny prigozhin, says he's turning his forces around from a march toward moscow potentially ending an apparent military insurrection in the russian capital. it remains very much unclear whether the most significant