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viewers in the united states and all around the world, i'm max foster in london. i want to bring you up to date on our developing story out of russia beginning with a dramatic turn of events. at this hour moscow is calm but traffic restrictions are still in place on a major highway connecting the capital with southwestern russia. the refinery fire that started after an apparent clash between wagner mercenaries and russia troops has been put out, happening after a -- headed by yevgeny prigozhin came to an end as suddenly as it was started. that is video of wagner troops shooting in the air as they pulled out of the city on saturday. earlier the kremlin said it cut a deal with prigozhin to stop the march of his force toss moscow, under that deal the kremlin says wagner troops will not face any legal action, but they will sign new contracts with russia's defense ministry.

while moscow will drop its charges against prigozhin he will go to belarus. wagner's leading says he agreed to that in order to avoid blood shed. >> translator: therefore, realizing all the responsibility for the fact that russian blood will be shed from one of the sides, we turn our columns around and leave in the opposite direction to the field camps according to the plan. >> the kremlin says it doesn't know where prigozhin is right now. this is video of people cheering as he left the town where his troops seized military facilities on saturday. officials tell cnn the u.s. intelligence community believes that prigozhin was planning to challenge russia's military leadership for a while. while washington didn't see any change in russia's nuclear posture during the turmoil, ivan watson explains how prigozhin's insurrection started and what it says about the kremlin's grip on

power. >> reporter: a weekend of chaos and drama in russia. mercenaries declared a mutiny and then called it off in under 24 hours. yevgeny prigozhin issued a call for rebellion, the head of the wagner mercenary group accusing top russian military commanders of gross mismanagement of the war in ukraine. then prigozhin released video of an alleged russian air strike on a wagner camp in ukraine, demanding revenge. russia's defense ministry denied the attack and soon russia's top prosecutor announced criminal charges against prigozhin. then in the early hours of saturday prigozhin followed through on his threats, sending his fighters across the border from ukraine back into russia. footage surfaced at dawn showing

wagner fighters surrounding the military head quart he is in a southern russian city. some locals stood nearby watching. at around 7:30 a.m. prigozhin was then shown dressing down senior russian military leaders and issuing demands. >> translator: again, we came here. we want to receive the chief of general staff and shoigu, until they show up we are located here blockading the city and will go to moscow. >> reporter: video showed columns of wagner troops heading north towards the capital, along the way claiming control of military installations in another region. footage later showed at least one russian helicopter narrowly avoiding a missile. at 10:00 a.m. moscow time

russian president vladimir putin made a televised address to the nation, calling the rebellion a stab in the back. >> translator: all those who deliberately chose the path of treachery, of blackmail and terrorist methods will face inevitable punishment and will answer to the law and to our people. >> reporter: the kremlin announced counterterrorism measures tightening security in moscow, but by saturday night suddenly a kremlin reversal. putin's spokesman announced a deal. >> translator: prigozhin released an audio message saying his troops would turn around and go back to field camps to avoid shedding russian blood. supporters chanted "wagner" as fighters drove out of rostov giving prigozhin hand shakes as he left. the kremlin says it's dropped charges and prigozhin will go to

belarus while promising his fighters contracts with the russian military. for now a crisis apparently averted but this very public betrayal and the mercenaries' short but unimpeded march on moscow reveals deep weakness at the heart of the putin regime. ivan watson, cnn. >> cnn covering every angle of this developing story. kevin liptak is in washington, selma abdelaziz is in london. bring us where we are now. we don't know where prigozhin s do we, and we don't know quite what's happened with his fighters? >> absolutely. we are still waiting to hear from yevgeny prigozhin. he has not exactly been a quiet man so expect that we will get another statement at some point soon. the last we saw of him was those dramatic images that you saw of him leaving rostov being greeted by crowds as he moved away after announcing his pull back from moscow. the troops heading -- his troops heading to moscow, rather. but regardless of prigozhin's

fate, the damage he has done here is done. he has revealed to the world really a president putin that we are unfamiliar with. not that strong man image that he has portrayed for over two decades. a president putin who is willing to u-turn. who started the day saying this man, prigozhin, has stabbed the russian people in the back, he will be held accountable. he has committed treason. to only a few hours later say those criminal charge will be dropped. he has also revealed a president putin that doesn't respond to threats with brute force, instead has responded to them in this case with compromise. figuring out a deal with his close ally, to get prigozhin into belarus and to rid himself with the problem quietly for now. and a president putin who, again, appears weaker than ever. who allowed a threat like prigozhin to his leadership to

grow and grow, to allow prigozhin to out his senior military leadership for months without stepping in. so for president putin this is the moment to get his house in order and there's a lot there to do, max. first of all, he has to get the russian elite, he has to get his top military brass back on board. they have been humiliated, they have been lambasted, they have been antagonized. how does he make that better for them, and then he needs to get the russian people back on board. president putin doesn't like to do things publicly and this has all unfolded in front of the world. >> could you not argue that he was successful if his mission was to disband wagner and he managed to do that in a matter of hours? >> if that was indeed the mission i think the kremlin would argue that primarily this has been a success in the sense that blood shed did not occur. this could have been a much, much worse outcome. you had wagner troops heading

towards moscow, you had, of course, the russian army prepared to defend president putin, you could have seen russian on russian fighting on russian soil. president putin himself brought up the possibility of civil conflict. that has been avoided and in president putin's mind you can imagine that is of course a success. but when it comes to dismantling wagner, there is still a question mark over that. the deal is that they signed -- wagner fighters sign deals, contracts, with the russian army, but you have to remember that much of wagner is made up of criminals, criminal elements, people who were given amnesty from prison to fight under yevgeny prigozhin. can they easily be co-opted into the russian army, that's the first question. the second question is will they now turn around and pledge loyalty to sergei shoigu the russian defense minister when two or three days ago they've watching their leader yevgeny prigozhin make fun of him, call him lazy, incompetent and corrupt. is that going to take place easily?

and finally you have the ukraine war unfolding, a war that has gotten closer and closer to the russian population. we know of the military draft and the backlash against that. more and more russian soldiers are coming home in body bags. now, the one man who seemed to be getting outcomes, getting results for president putin, yevgeny prigozhin and the wagner fighters, that is no longer an option. how does president putin save face here. i think i've left you with more questions than answers, but that's really what we have here, max, is a whole lot of questions. >> yeah, absolutely. thank you, selma. let's speak to kevin, following reaction to washington to this extraordinary situation. we didn't hear a huge amount of comments from world leaders or western leaders, saying it was an internal russian matter but they were having a lot of meetings. do you think they were completely called out by this? >> i think according to american intelligence officials they had at least been monitoring what they called this power struggle

between the russian ministry of defense and the wagner group really dating back to january. that's when we first heard from american officials that this power struggle was under way, that they were detecting that in their intelligence and that they expected it to mount over the coming months. they expected it to escalate and of course it did. now, earlier this week the intelligence community actually briefed members of congress that they saw the wagner group making these preparations to do what they eventually did. they also briefed officials at the white house and the pentagon. what i think caught american officials offguard is the speed at which this occurred, how quickly it escalated. you kind of saw that in washington, there was this scramble to get a handle on things, in fact, two very key officials, the joint chiefs chairman mark milley and the national security adviser jake sullivan had planned to be overseas this weekend, they had

to cancel those trips to remain in washington or at least the washington area to diffuse this crisis. i think at the white house, at the pentagon, at the state department the big question right now is what this means for the war in ukraine because certainly on the face of it a diminished vladimir putin would be good for the ukrainians, but on the flip side i think that there is a worry at what putin might do if he felt cornered, if he felt like he needed to demonstrate some strength. remember, russia is the world's largest stockpiled nuclear weapons. now, the u.s. says tonight they don't see a change in russia's nuclear posture but that is the threat looming over all of this and i think that does inform some of the strategy you're seeing both in washington and in european capitals, this sort of response of no response. not saying anything that could potentially give vladimir putin a pretext to claim that this was all an american or a nato plot. in fact, when president biden

got on the phone earlier saturday with the french president emmanuel macron, the german chancellor olaf scholz and the british prime minister rishi sunak that was one of the things they all do come to an agreement on was that they weren't going to speak out publicly on this in order to let the events play out on the ground in russia. going forward there are certainly a lot of questions. american officials are trying to determine what this means for vladimir putin. i think the one thing that you hear from american officials is they don't believe that prigozhin is necessarily going to go back to selling hotdogs. they do believe that he will remain a force, whether he is in exile in belarus or not, they do believe the situation is not necessarily over, max. >> okay. kevin, thank you for joining us from washington. joining me now is the russian investigative journalist arena borgun, also senior fellow for the sent fore for european policy analysis. thank you for joining us. we had this dramatic news

yesterday which our reporters have just taken us through, but what does it mean today? >> today it means that putin's authority -- we saw putin weak and his authority was shaken and in terms of consequences it might be a little bit unpredictable because we have never seen him so weak. >> do you feel -- are you concerned about that element that kevin was talking about, that because he feels weaker he may have to act stronger and we may see the repercussions of that in the war in ukraine? >> yes, i think so. in terms of escalation, it might be very dangerous because putin he is a strong man and he always been -- he always looks strong and this is the first time when he demonstrated that he can be -- could be weak. so escalation it's a very

possible scenario. escalation on the ukrainian front and the battlefield and also in the -- inside russia. >> what do you think might have been the terms of the deal that prigozhin agreed to? do you think the senior members of the military will remain in office, for example? >> i think so because they must. they must stay in their position, otherwise it will be like yevgeny prigozhin was winning completely. so i think so, yes. shoigu will be in his place, at least for a while. >> so why do you think prigozhin agreed to stop the march to moscow as he described it? >> you know, prigozhin he is not a terrorist and he is not a rebel, he is putin's creature and that he decided to act so brazenly and so crazy was very surprising to everybody so i

don't think he really planned a real -- a real coup d'etat or a real -- or a real -- i think that his idea was to put more pressure on putin to give him more authority in terms of in his conflict with the russian minister of defense. that was his idea. but as you know yevgeny prigozhin he is a former criminal and he just crosses the line and he didn't understand that he put himself in a very dangerous position. so i don't think he was planning a real -- a real reprisal. >> do you think putin saw that which is why the wagner fighters weren't really stopped, were they, on their way to moscow on that road?

>> okay. we're going to leave that interview there, but we will ask the same question of our other analyst coming up. vladimir putin trusted yevgeny prigozhin enough to hire him as a chef and now the mercenary strongman has become a threat to the kremlin power structure. what else we know about prigozhin coming up after the break. ent migraine attacks. qulipta gets right to work. keeps attacks away over time. qulipta is a preventive treatment for episodic migraine. most common side effects are e nausea, constipation, and tiredness. ask your doctor about qulilipt.

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let's get more on our top story. russian president vladimir putin has survived the most serious challenge to his rule he has ever seen. the kremlin said wagner leader yevgeny prigozhin has cut a deal to stop his mercenaries from advance to go moscow in an armed convoy. the kremlin says wagner troops will not face any legal action but they will be expected to sign new contracts with russia's defense ministry. moscow will also drop criminal charges against prigozhin who has agreed to move to belarus. allow the immediate crisis has been averted, one analyst told us earlier that the danger to the russian president is far from over. robert english from the university of southern california says prigozhin doesn't have to be inside russia to pose a formidable threat.

>> he lost, he stood down. putin won. but prigozhin is sort of like a caesar in exile, right? someone who can still threaten from abroad, someone who has enormous credibility as a military leader, who has loyal troops, although he is separated from them for now, and someone who's anti-corruption, anti-elite, his anger at the sort of self-satisfied oligarchs in moscow resonates very strongly. so he could be a future threat as well. >> who is the wagner mercenary leader yevgeny prigozhin, then? brian todd takes a closer look at the man who allegedly led an armed revolt and appears to be getting a pass from the russian regime. >> reporter: the man recently videotaped screaming at vladimir putin's top military officials for betraying his mercenaries on the battlefield is someone used to the tactic of strong arming,

threatening, ruthlessly taking what he wants. wagner group leader yevgeny prigozhin may have won over vladimir putin for displaying those traits, rather than the fact that they both hail from the same hometown, st. petersburg. >> i think that prigozhin does have some personality traits that putin not only likes but i think i think sees in himself. >> reporter: prigozhin's rise is a russian tale of brute force ambition. he served time in prison in the final stages of soviet union for petty crimes. when he got out he start add hot dog stand, parlayed that into successful restaurants that putin sometimes brought other world leaders to. prigozhin scored lucrative government catering contracts earning him the nickname putin's chef. >> being the guy who runs the kremlin food service might sound like not a particularly important thing but to people afraid of being poisoned that's a position of trust for prigozhin. >> reporter: prigozhin used putin's trust and resources to

make another bold and extraordinary move around 201, founding wagner as a paramilitary group then operating mostly in the shadows. >> to run coupes and mercenaries acti activities, he was involved in syria. when russia didn't want to use its own troops, when russia wants to outsource to contractors it relies on wagner, the most prominent of these kind of institutions. >> reporter: cnn has tracked wagner mercenaries operating in the central african republic, sudan, mozambique, mali, as well as ukraine. >> prigozhin has by some accounts 25,000 men, many who are battle hardened. >> reporter: battle hardened and brutal. human rights groups say wagner has committed a series of human rights abuses including allegedly torturing and murdering a syrian prisoner with

a sledgehammer and executing a wagner fighter who had defected the same way. >> the videos of prigozhin and his people using college hammers to maim and kill people. so he understands the value, the propaganda value of coming across as a brutal almost unsufl liesed kind of person because that's another kind of power that i think the russian population certainly at least fears and in some cases respects. >> reporter: one analyst says no matter how this high stakes drama turns out in the end that at the very least yevgeny prigozhin has damaged vladimir putin by openly telling the russian people that the ukraine war was started under fraudulent circumstances. brian todd, cnn, washington. earlier my colleague kim brunhuber spoke with a former ukrainian defense minister. they spoke about saturday's extraordinary events and what the insurrection might mean for the wagner group going forward.

>> i don't think we had too many expectations yesterday and that's why today we're just watching the situation how it unfolds. >> yeah. >> i don't think that -- >> yeah, go ahead. >> i don't think that's the end of the story for prigozhin because first of all he needs to learn and will know that putin doesn't honor any agreements. secondly obviously putin will consider this as a threat so there will be some continuation that have story. also we were quite shocked with the low level of readiness of the troops inside russia because the rebel forces could move all along the country almost without stopping them. the only reason it didn't escalate further is because prigozhin decided to deescalate. finally we clearly see the demise of the wagner as an independent force on our front line. they will either dissent great or joining russian regular forces which means they will stop existing as the independent facility.

and we have to say that the only reasonable -- the only minor success of russians over the last year was attributed specifically to that group. there would be some changes obviously in the russian armed forces and the ukrainian battle front very soon. still to come on "cnn newsroom," we heard cheers inside russia for wagner forces who threatened a coup on russia's leaders. we will tell you what's ahead for them.

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welcome back to our viewers in the u.s. and around the world, i'm max forcer in london bringing you up to date on the latest situation in russia at this hour. traffic remained restricted on a major highway that connects russia to rostov-on-don after wagner forces left that area. the highway sustained damage and is being repaired. as for yevgeny prigozhin the kremlin says it doesn't know where he is right now he was seen leaving rostov-on-don in a vehicle, shaking hands and driving away. the u.s. intelligence community says it suspected for some time that prigozhin was planning such a move but didn't expect it to happen so quickly and to be called off in a few hours. joining us nathan hodge formerly our moscow bureau chief. where do you think prigozhin is? do you think he will end up in belarus? >> we have more questions than answers on all of these things. under this deal that's supposedly been brokered by

alexander lukashenko prigozhin is supposed to be into an apparent exile in belarus but he hasn't popped up there yet. we did see him departing yesterday from a russian military headquarters in rostov yesterday, but, again, we have only had the account of what this deal appears to be either the belarusian presidential office or from the kremlin, we haven't heard from prigozhin about how he understands the deal, where he's going to go, will he go and what exactly he would be doing, you know, in bel belarus. i think it's pretty clear he's not going to resume his catering business given that he's raised his profile politically within russia, extraordinarily since the beginning of russia's full-scale invasion and he's shown the scope of those ambitions with this unprecedented challenge to putin with his forces marching toward moscow yesterday, max. >> and from what we do know it

appears that putin has won in that challenge but he does appear weaker now, doesn't he, bus he did look vulnerable yesterday which a lot of people didn't expect. should we be concerned that he's going to try to get that strongman image back by escalating the war in ukraine, for example? >> max, i think that that strongman image which the creme inl incidentally has built up very carefully, the image of the man on horseback, the shirtless putin we're used to seeing, that image has been, you know, retrieve blee damaged. so the surprising thing about this is not just that it's the biggest challenge to putin's rule in over two decades, but the idea that putin cannot be challenged has been dispelled. it's important to remember that russia has cracked down massively on internal dissent, essentially outlawed criticism of the military and here you have someone who has not only

challenged the leadership of putin's military, the uniformed leadership, but he's basically, you know, openly gone into what putin described as an armed rebellion and, you know, despite the fact that, you know, for the time being putin appears to have pulled prigozhin or lukashenko or whatever version of events -- whatever forces have pulled back back from the brink of confrontation, it's really clear that, you know, putin is facing something unprecedented here in terms of his ability to project a kind of mastery that he is, you know, the man who brought russia back from his knees, max. >> what does that mean for the rest of the world or is it just an sbinternal matter? >> it's not an internal matter when you talk about the fact that russia is a nuclear-armed state, a country that's invaded neighboring ukraine. all of these events that are

unfolding are being watched incredibly closely by ukrainians because it could potentially have an immediate impact on what's happening on the battlefield. prigozhin's fighters were instrumental in taking bakhmut, that was presented as one of russia's sort of few, you know, clear advances on the battlefield in recent months and i think that there's a lot of concern that, you know, prigozhin may have raised his profile, he may be leaving for bell louis, but i think ukrainians would generally see him as not a terribly palatable alternative to putin. this is somebody who has openly supported the war even though he has questioned now the rationale for going to war and has criticized the leadership, you know, he is a hardliner and he speaks in sort of a hard line language that i think appeals to a lot of russians, one of the reasons he was able to raise his profile, max, even -- >> prigozhin's fighters are

being integrated -- they are trying to integrate them into the russian military, many of them have criminal records and they believed in prigozhin's cause, presumably, which clashed with the russian military's cause. how -- do you see those mercenaries signing up to the russian military and if they don't what's going to happen to them? >> max, i think, first of all, putin seems to be unleashed forces beyond his control by your rendering the state's monopoly on the use of force, allowing not only this private military company to flourish, but also, you know, others have appeared popped up on the scene as well and it's created a shambles when it comes to unity of command for the russian military effort in ukraine and like wise i think there's a lot of concern about what happens to these battle hardened -- you know, those who have survived the meat grinder of fighting in ukraine, what happens when, you know, their leader is gone, we

do see indications that wagner fighters have loyalty to prigozhin. many of them were amnestied from prisons, in fact, to be able to fight. again, there are bigger questions about who is actually supported the training and equipping of wagner all along. they have heavy weaponry, you know, does this start to spiral further out of control, max. >> okay. nathan, thank you so much for your insights there. earlier cnn's christiane amanpour interviewed a professor of international affairs and the great granddaughter of a former soviet leader. she spoke about the armed uprising in russia and raised serious questions about vladimir putin's grip on power. here is some of what she said. >> for the putin -- we've seen it. that is not a mystery that things are going badly. that is not a mystery that he is not as strong as he appears to be or says that he is. it is more important that he's

there because none of them -- or so it appears -- have enough power to take over and undermine the rest. so if somebody goes up, somebody goes down and those who go down cannot afford to go down so that has been going on and i think that's kind of prigozhin and his -- and i'm sure the people behind him close to putin who was able -- were able to take advantage of. >> tharussia surviving the uprig then, but its problems are far from over. when we come back i will speak with the country's former deputy energy minister about the government's challenges. with powerful, easy-to-use tools, power e*trade makes complex trading easier. react to fast-moving markets with dynamic charting and a futures ladder ththat lets you place, flatten, or reversrse orders so you won't miss an opportunity. e*trade from morgan stanley. (man) what if my type 2 diabetes takes over?

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hours after mercenary chief yevgeny prigozhin called off his armed uprising in russia the

country is still dealing with the impact of that insurrection. authorities say they've just extinguished a fire at an oil refinery where the mercenaries appeared to have clashed with russian troops. the regional governor saying the wagner fighters are moving steadily out of the area and the country is still restricting traffic on parts of a major highway which the wagner fighters used to advance towards moscow. prigozhin and his forces have now pulled back from their positions. in and in ukraine the mayor of kyiv says at least five people are confirmed dead from a russian missile attack that hit an apartment block. joining us me now is the vice president for international advocacy at the free russian foundation and former deputy minister of energy in russia. thank you so much for joining us. you are one of the people who understands moscow, understands the kremlin and the people in there right now. how do you think they may have been responding to this news yesterday from prigozhin and

this advance towards moscow? >> well, i think what happened simply sent shock waves across putin's elite because he was presenting himself -- vladimir putin was presenting himself as a problem-solver, like we might have some issues here and there, but whenever the great emperor interferes then things get into order. i think this was the biggest mess so far since the beginning of vladimir putin's rule nearly a quarter of a century ago because actually russia lost control of two major cities, rostov and voronezh over 1 million res ments each and that was extremely embarrassing for putin because he could not do anything about it, he had to ask for help from belarus dictator lukashenko to get prigozhin out of the country and make wagner group retreat. that's a number one humiliation for putin across the history of his rule. >> you mentioned the elites and

prigozhin was a particular threat to him, wasn't he, because his narrative throughout has been that the elites are living this luxury life back in russia while soldiers are losing their lives, working class soldiers and criminals, actually, losing their lives on the front lines. the ideas of prigozhin coming in and taking over moscow was particularly threatening to the elites who support putin. >> yes, and it was threatening not only because of their on personal and selfish interests but because also everybody understands who prigozhin really s that's an absolutely ruthless and lawless murderer and a criminal and everybody knows about the trail of crime he left wherever wagner was participating in syria, africa, in occupied territories of ukraine. so, yes, people were pretty much terrified and so much for the putin's weak response to that because obviously russian elite was not impressed with how badly putin handled all this crisis.

>> he looked vulnerable, didn't he, yesterday, which is probably his biggest challenge. you also saw prigozhin being cheered by supporters, ordinary russians it appeared on the streets of the city he was leaving. how might that unsettle the elites around putin and how do you think putin might try to, you know, respond to that and get that strong man status back? >> well, first we have to understand that the elites around putin are extremely afraid and incapacitated. so please don't expect that, you know, if -- now that they've found that putin is weak that they will somehow revolt against him. no. they are very much afraid of any action by security services against them. putin is in this regard in control of his government and of his capitals, but, however, i think this will change the motivation for many people because some of them had the idea that this regime has some prospect. it is strong enough to withstand

the difficulties and bring russia to some sort of a future. i think this hope has diminished for most people after wagner revolt and many of them will be trying to find their ways to leaving or at least toning down their enthusiasm in supporting the system that will have a major structural impact over time. >> but can putin get back that status that he had amongst the elite and wider russia, or do you think this is the beginning of the end of his grip on power? >> it is the beginning, probably the beginning was last year when he failed miserably with his attempt to swiftly capture ukraine and establish control of its territory. so now we are into not even the beginning but the second and third stages. what is, i think, even probably more dangerous in the long term that prigozhin mentioned him by name openly and explicitly as the guy who is responsible and guilty for all the difficulties that russia is experiencing.

never happened before on that scale. so i think the major consequence will be that people across the country, across even the loyal putin's base would begin speaking about him as the source of problems, as the guy who needs to be removed for russia to move on. >> better the devil you know some people would say. there could be someone even more scary for the wider world that replaces him. is that any sort of topic of discussion in moscow, do you think? >> i mean, consider like -- prigozhin is just another part of his same persona. like dr. jekyll and mr. hyde sort of thing. there cannot be anything worse. can be something similar in magnitude but putin is exactly the same type of ruthless criminal as prigozhin. i think all this hypothetical talk about something being worse than putin is just theory because putin himself is worse

than anything we can imagine. so, no, and we've got to take a chance because with putin more worse things are about to come. >> just one thought on wagner. this idea that it could be so easily dissolved, which is what we're effectively being told by moscow. i mean, it's not that easy, is it, to just disband, you know, a private army and integrate it back into the russian military? >> i think russian government and military will be doing some swift steps to disarm wagner and really disband them because they saw very evident threat which obviously was very dangerous to putin himself. so i think what they've been doing now after decapitating wagner and removing prigozhin from the country, they will be trying to swiftly disarm the remaining units. let's see how it goes. this is what we will be watching in the coming days and weeks. >> absolutely.

vladimir milov, thank you for your insight. wagner mers years fought with the russian military in the wake against ukraine now what some ukrainians are saying about the turmoil in russia. that's coming up after the break.

updating our top story, the death toll has now risen to five after a russian missile attack in kyiv on saturday. rescue teams are still going through the damaged apartment block. meanwhile, there is an uneasy calm in russia right now after mercenary chief yevgeny prigozhin called off his insurrection against the military. the kremlin says he cut a deal to stop his forces from advance to go moscow in an armed convoy as part of the agreement the mercenaries will not face criminal charges, but many will sign new contracts with the defense ministry. the kremlin says prigozhin has also agreed to leave russia and move to belarus. the crisis in russia generate add glury of reactions across the globe. here is how leaders have been responding. qatar expressed great kaern, called for peaceful means and

utmost restraint from all parties. the turkish president pledged his full support to putin. a statement from the iranian foreign ministry says the nation supports the rule of law in the russian federation, plus nato, the european union and world leaders including from georgia, kazakhstan and germany said they are closely watching the situation. france's foreign ministry is advising against all trouble to russia. latvia is boosting security at its border and has banned russian entering. ukrainians appear to be pleased as they watched the standoff unfold. some residents in kyiv even saying they're enjoying the chaos. take a look. >> translator: i enjoy what is happening out of russia. the inevitable conflict between prigozhin and putin was expected. i don't know what may come out of it but i wish for them to shoot each other and die. >> translator: they started the war. they got it back.

the harder you press the spring, the harder it shoots. the situation pressed to such extent in russia that it became hopeless. i consider what happened a natural event. it will influence the war, but i think it will not be over in a day. we will have to endure a bit. russia will be in flames. >> former u.s. ambassador to ukraine john herb said the crisis in moscow will definitely have an impact on the battlefield as it's demoralizing for the russian troops fighting in ukraine. >> it was very clear that he was spooked and we could understand why he was spooked because he launched an unpopular war, unpopular even among russian elites and here you had a man who was considered something of a hero for being more successful on the battlefield in ukraine, criticizing the reasons for doing going to war and demonstrating he has his own independent power. this is not a 24-hour blip. it's like prigozhin is the

person who looked behind the screen at the wizard and oz and saw the great and terrible oz is this little man. putin has been diminished by this affair. he declared what prigozhin has done as treasury though there seems to be some understanding that prigozhin getting to back to what he was doing. he has ee merged as a second source of power in russia who cannot be controlled by the strong man of the kremlin. that's remarkable. as for the impact on the battlefield, certainly this is demoralizing to russian troops but of course they've been dee more lysed by their terrible treatment and ukraine's success with the counter offensive last year. when wagner pulled out its forces after they took bakhmut, although not taking it very well and the ukrainians understand this. i expect this will add a bit of impetus to a counteroffensive which has not gone badly but has not gone as well as some people

expected. >> and that wraps this hour of "cnn newsroom." i'm max foster in london. cnn this morning continues this morning with the latest from russia next. impetus to a counteroffensive

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