>> good evening, i'm stephanie ruhle. our coverage of the crisis and russia continues with a special addition of the 11th hour. it is now five a.m. on monday morning in moscow. a new week beginning with the nation on edge after the world witnessed an extraordinary

challenge to russian president vladimir putin's iron grip on the country. this weekend, one of his closest allies yevgeny prigozhin leader of the wagner mercenary group turned against him, staging a 24-hour revolt. prigozhin mobilized his army of soldiers for hire to march on moscow and suddenly he turned around and called it. off and be sears kier simmons is in moscow with the latest. years >> in russia tonight, state television is not showing these stunning images. russians cheering for the leader of this week's aborted rebellion. his soldiers as they leave the city of rostov-on-don. >> their mutiny is bringing the country to the brink of chaos less than 24 hours ago when yevgeny prigozhin, the leader of the wagner group had a march to moscow and response to what he called an attack on his fighters. tanks and mercenary troops took to the streets, moving within 120 miles of the russian capital.

before unprecedented deal with president putin, it was brokered by another president, belarusian leader alexander lukashenko. apparently allowing the man behind the insurrection to go unpunished and into exile. it was the biggest challenge to vladimir putin's power in 23 years. the president called prigozhin's rebellion a betrayal. and a stab in the back. >> what is striking about, it it is internal. the fact that you have from within someone directly put questioning the authority of putin, over the weekends, wagner forces were coming out of ukraine and going into russia, toward moscow, in and of itself that is extraordinary. >> nbc news has learned that u.s. intelligence agencies were aware that prigozhin was planning a challenge to russia's senior military leaders briefing congressional leaders about it last week. according to a source familiar with the matter. at the very, least president putin has more problems today than he did yesterday with unknown consequences for his so-called special military

operation in ukraine. >> there is a lot to break down. let's get right to it and bring in democratic congressman eric swalwell of california. he's on the homeland security committee. thank you for being here tonight what is your reaction as you watch what's happening over this weekend in russia. >> it's clear that russia is not as unified as ukraine. it's not as unified as the united states and the nato alliance that we stitched together. we have to be careful not to interpret this as, you know, some precursor to what they call an east zorra. it would be a spark. in russian, they say from a spark a fire can flare up. i don't see this as a revolution that is about to take. place what i see here is probably a little bit of delirium from prigozhin who has leveraged some of his concerns about battlefield readiness in the public to get more resources. and i think that here he's not

seeking a revolution. he was seeking a command and control change. it does show that there is unrest in russia. for ukraine, they should lean in the counter offensive. >> given all that we've, seen are we concerned about right russia might do in ukraine next? at least this was humiliating for them. putin will want to show some sort of force here. >> well, you know, putin has the benefit of state controlled. media we look at this with a western perspective. we think, well, how embarrassing this must be. he's going to have to lash out. the truth is, the best thing about this conflict, victor needs whatever vladimir putin wants to declare to be. they -- the problem he has now, he is probably going to have to rob resources from the battlefield in ukraine to better protect himself. prigozhin move so fast. we never saw the russian military move that fast inside ukraine the way that prigozhin

put moscow at risk. we can only mean that putin is probably going to have to take resources away from ukraine to protect himself and that's where i think we have to look at this as russia fumbling the football on their own 20 yard line. so let's really do use the counter offensive to take advantage in the east. >> so, how do you think our administration needs to handle putin and the kremlin after this? what changes? >> well, i think it has to always be about the territorial integrity of ukraine. never to suggest that we are for regime change. for one, we are awful when we try to do a regime change. two, to putin, putin's russia and russia's putin. so, if he sees this as the united states trying to foment regime change, if the russian people see, that they may be more likely to support him ratcheting it up and using a tactical nuke on the battlefield. i think just support ukraine as they make advantage to push russia out. russia, again, they are going to be, they're going to see

their resources in decline as they have to move them to protect moscow. we don't have to do anything behind the scenes for regime change. and we do better if that was organic anyway. >> what are your republican colleagues saying about all of this? >> well, there is responsible republicans who have supported the effort. there is the putin curious and the putin block. in their inaction, like speaker mccarthy who has said essentially is not gonna be any funding for ukraine, essentially helping putin. and that's right unity right now is so important. if we can do all we can right now to help ukraine make this push as russia is on its heels, this could change the course of the conflict and get russia finally out of ukraine. >> given what has just happened this weekend do you think it makes things harder or easier to get congress on the same page to pass more for ukraine? >>.

he understands the importance of this. senate republicans, senate democrats and alignment. you have house democrats and the leadership on the republican side, at least on the committee sidearm services foreign affairs. speaker mccarthy, he has this dirty deal with marjorie taylor greene, matt gaetz, others, to stay in power. he can only go as far as they want to go. if you want to be a leader and recognize that this is a moment right now, we can do this. we can increase funding. if he sees himself as more important than what happens on the battlefield in ukraine, they are going to really suffer. bacon not me this opportunity. >> what is the number one thing you want people watching to understand about what is happening in russia. this weekend was very confusing. there is a lot of misinformation out there. >> yeah, this is only about ukraine's territorial integrity. the united states is not trying to foment a revolution in

russia. if we were seen as doing that, i think it would actually backfire. this has to be what the russian people want. that is the position that the biden administration that's what secretary blinken has been saying today. so, we should let that take shape. we should also understand that prigozhin, anyone that would follow putin is very likely going to also be like a murderous thug. you're not going to replace them with navalny or an angel. it's going to be someone who probably also has pretty nationalist feelings about russia. not pro ukraine at all. so, we have to be prepared for that. we have to be wide-eyed as we go into this. >> i gangster for a gangster, congressman, thank you for joining us tonight. i appreciate it. >> my pleasure. >> thank you, stephanie. >> with, that let's bring in our lead off panel this evening. former white house senior director and former state department senior adviser kevin baron is here, the executive editor of defense one with more than 20 years in washington's defense. national security and foreign

affairs. william taylor, former u.s. ambassador to ukraine, he is also the united states institute of peace, vice president for russia and europe, ambassador, let's start with you. your reaction to what we have seen play out over the last 72 hours. >> stephanie, the remarkable thing, the weakness of president putin. his grip on power seems to be shaken. his ability to act seems to be constrained. he had to go to president lukashenko is not known to be a heavyweight in this area in order to get some kind of agreement. i'm not entirely clear on what lukashenko brought to the table. i think the big message was the weakness of president putin and this is to the advantage of the congressman of human crime. ukraine has an opportunity to take advantage of this turmoil.

of this fracture at the top of the kremlin. >> kevin, same question to you. your reaction to this weekend. >> well, i'm looking at a couple of things. one, like the ambassador, how do the ukrainians take advantage of this. how is the west helping them. most importantly, on the ground. its territory. that's the name of the game. we were watching this counteroffensive slowly unfold. and now what happens, how distracted are the russians of the wagner fighters? beyond that, i think i am looking at the longer term gain of what happens to the big picture future of russia. the endgame is not just ukraine pushes russia out. the endgame is what happens putin is gone. we've heard from a long time that nobody was sure or hot that if putin was gone. i think that made this clear. again, if you think of prigozhin's weekend as something less than a full-size

coup, you didn't want to take over and sit in the kremlin and run moscow. he just had some beef about how he was being treated. how's men were being treated. well, nothing else really changes in moscow other than we know putin is in a weaker state. there is a longer term and a short term to treat attention to. >> niagara, what is your reaction? >> one up but includes his idolize, someone who helped execute his imperialist vision on the world stage, suddenly, not only walking away from the agenda, but challenging at. and saying that he wants his own piece of the pie. you don't march a paramilitary group toward the capitol because you think the guy in the kremlin is doing a great job. in fact, for several months, prigozhin has been talking about how the ministry of defense, the russian army itself, has been failing in ukraine and that his people who are mercenaries, he has been called a warlord, are the ones that are bearing the brunt of putin's vision. this is not a unified group of

individuals who are executing putin's agenda. the folks who have been on the fence when it comes to defending ukraine, like saudi arabia, like turkey, like china, they should take notice that russia and putin in particular is not all in alignment. not as powerful as we seem to think it is. >> ambassador, there are endless reasons why vladimir putin should be challenged. how surprising is it to see this particular person, a man that putin essentially made be the one to do it? >> he did make prigozhin. you're exactly right, stephanie. and this is another bad decision that president putin made. now he's made several that are big ones and bad ones. big and bad decisions. obviously, the decision to invade his neighbor, to invade ukraine. that is a big blunder. and then to give prigozhin the ability to do things, resources,

the ability to take prisoners out of jail, to put them on the front line. to emphasize what prigozhin is doing. and then the emphasize what putin is doing. so, putin has made some real mistakes here. prigozhin is one of them. >> kevin, what does it say that the wagner group was able to get so close to moscow in such a short amount of time? >>, yeah i've heard people talk about this. i think that a little bit of grain of salt. this is not the same as if the u.s. army was on its way to moscow and made it that close or any nato country. it was supposedly a friend of putin's. these are russians advancing toward russians. so, of course it was surprising that there wasn't as much of a fight put up to keep them from getting anywhere near. there was a fight. men died yesterday in this advance. i think it showed the speed at which it happened.

it caught everyone by surprise, including moscow. and it shows a bit of the slowness of the response. i've had some analysis that points out that there is a lack of supply and planning the echelon, if you think of the russian flinch as the part of ukraine that behind those lines, behind the staging grounds, it was not much of a defense. you wouldn't expect that. russia's always been -- someone coming from moscow. so, it was, you know, an unplanned event with an unplanned defense. i wouldn't go farther than that and say that somehow this is an opening for the u.s. to do anything inside of russia or for the -- if anything, it is what people are using to demonstrate, they're using it to say, call putin's bluff for any of the hesitation you may have had to get more advanced weapons to ukraine. like the attack, it was like f-16s. or to make a move on crimea. these bigger moves that some western leaders have been

afraid would trigger putin into some response against the rest. a lot of those folks think, hey, putin could get its act together yesterday. take advantage. this shows how to shovel they are. maybe you could go for crimea. maybe you could put that more advanced stuff. and maybe this counteroffensive could be far more aggressive and really, we're afraid of something we don't need to be afraid of. >> now your, at what will all of this mean though for the future of the wagner group? >> prigozhin is not a hero in this case. he is somebody who has taken money to be brutal on the battlefield. everywhere from syria to ukraine. many of the atrocities that we have been covering and we've heard and documented have been conducted by his group of people. absent to his leadership on the battlefield, there is, as kevin, said an opportunity for allies and for the ukrainians to be moving forward. it also shows that the idea of

negotiating with putin's is not the path forward. putin does not have a grip on the battlefield. in fact, he doesn't have a grip on the ministry of defense. he's lost a dozen or more on the battlefield. one of his closest allies is now effectively walking away from him. executing his vision. putin does not have that negotiating power to determine how to carve up ukraine as some of suggested. what he can do is withdraw and end the war. and-ing it really is up to putin. the united states, the allies, and ukraine need to keep the pressure in that regard. >> ambassador, does what happened this weekend changed relations between russia and the u.s., russia and any other country in the west? >> it does, it suggests that as kevin was saying earlier, putin is less powerful, he's less influential, he has less of a

grip. that suggests that there are things that we could and should be doing in particular to support the ukrainians in this counteroffensive at the weapons that they them have said and we really need. , yes the weakness that president putin has shown does affect him. they probably affect some vis-à-vis china. china was always saw president putin as the junior partner, the little brother. and now the little brother is less powerful than even they thought. others around the world are noticing that as well. >> kevin, can you dig deeper for us? we are doing some coverage on the wagner group and who they are. put into context who they are and what they have done for putin and specifically prigozhin's role in that. who this guy is. >> to add to what bill, said don't, forget there is a nato summit in three weeks. all of this is happening and it hasn't changed the relationship

with nato with the united states. you'd expect that there is much more emboldened set of leaders going to that event. in the last couple of weeks, a lot of us have been reporting about how the bachelors and leaders are talking about what they should announce at that conference. should they announced that they are officially going to ukraine -- to give them a path to membership. i would assume that this weekend's events give them a lot more courage to go down that path. as far as the wagner group, the wagner group's, you, know was the largest private military force we knew of consequence. as nigh are said, they worked in syria. they worked in africa. they were in ukraine. they are doing bad things and all these places. they are acting as a lot of these military contra charter groups do. the worst of it, they are completely unbound by any kind of ethics and any kind of moral

code that a lot of soldiers have become part -- in the west. so, they are sent to do their dirty work. the thing, is almost all of russia's work is dirty work in these areas. they operate in areas where the united states has, frankly, pulled out out of it. they are active in syria where the united states used to be. when they try to they -- got wiped off the map. they are active in places where the world is not looking. in dark corners where people are suffering. resources are being exploited and bad deals are made and bad. dictators and leaders. the west is letting it happen. so, turning to ukraine. we all know the story that the russian army could not do the job. incomes wagner group. and that's when things get nasty. the last few weeks have been the real -- of what a lot of folks think was coming. there is no way this force could sustain itself. to be side by side with the

russian army for very long before this was going to happen. they would be competing interests and battlefield plans. there would be competing strategic -- sir, enough one of them trying to fight back. so, it's a cautionary tale for the world to allow actors like this to go unchecked and will reap what we sowed with this group. >> well, i am letting we have a lot more questions to go through tonight. we are going to take a quick break. when we come, back a special edition of the 11th hour continues. we are just getting underway on a sunday night. we need to dig deep on what this means for ukraine. people in ukraine, and what they are saying tonight. ay sing tonight. -v, i didn't know who i would be. but here i am... being me. keep being you... and ask your healthcare provider about the number one prescribed h-i-v treatment, biktarvy. biktarvy is a complete, one-pill, once-a-day treatment

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facade it is too soon to tell exactly where they go. and when they get their. we have all sorts of new questions that putin is going to have to address in the weeks and months ahead. >> secretary of state anthony blinken spoke earlier today about cracks and glen robertson's authority. our panel is still with us this evening. ambassador taylor, what if you've been hearing for people in ukraine about all of this? >> they are very pleased, stephanie, you won't be surprised. they are enthusiastic about their chances. their preparations, they are united as never before. this is -- i was before all this happened. even then, their preparations well along. as we know, kevin described it earlier. they are probing along this long line. the defensive line. they are looking for the weakness. and now they have another

weakness. wagner folks have pulled out. wagner the -- russian soldiers are probably down 25,000 or 50,000. there are weaknesses on the russian line that the ukrainians are eager to take advantage of. they have morale and they have enthusiasm. they see that now it's the time. >> they are excited that there is a possible crack in the system that they see putin being vulnerable. they are not excited about the wagner group. i, mean there are certainly no friends to ukraine. >> not a bit. they are not. friends the wagner group is now pulled out, they are no longer on the front line with the russians facing the ukrainians. that is a hole in the line. the russians have to find troops to plug this. >> kevin, we have the same videos showing russians and everyday civilians cheering on the wagner forces as they left. we also saw people taking

selfies with prigozhin himself. what does that tell you about what every day russians are thinking right now? it goes back to what you said in our last segment. they have very limited information. it state run media controlled by putin. >> it shows how little we know about them. we've heard from all along. especially moscow, who have all this information, they have been cut off in the world. they are more inclined to support the states and to support the regime, in the south, we have the ones who are closer to ukraine. there are more russians who are anti ukrainian. they've been involved in the conflict for much longer. it is a mix. i don't know, i'm not an expert on russian opinion, if you ask all those people why those two tearing, we'll get more answers for it. i guess that's my best guess.

>> why do you think they are cute or hearing him on? >> it's very interesting. it's not just prigozhin. you have progress reported a couple weeks ago, the two other organizations made up of russian citizens, to the hundreds to battalions that invaded russia. they move from ukraine into russia. they moved into belgrade. it's not just prigozhin. there is a sentiment among russians in opposition to putin. so, it's not just prigozhin. we've seen this in other places. >> what do you think putin's next move is going to be a? >> why prigozhin's been really affected, with a, staff is building his own narrative. it's not the putin aired of. the entire time that he has been brutal to the people of ukraine, and he's also been speaking openly about how in affected the ministry of

defense. is he has to artemis, one of them is the guy who is the defense minister. the other one is the person putin, the general that putin put in charge of commanding the russian military and ukraine. so, that is part of the aura, that proportion built for himself. it's part of why some people in russia were cheering him. whatever success russia had been getting, they had been seeing it as due to prigozhin and his own mercenary army. now, that are, me as ambassador, said not on the battlefield anymore. they've now got an official pardon despite 24 hours ago being called part of a treason march towards moscow. so, that is something that is a crack in the fissure that can certainly be exploited by the western allies and by ukraine. just because putin is now consolidating his support around his ministry of defense, it doesn't translate to success in ukraine for him. >> kevin, what do you think putin's next move is?

>> well, he's got to break the ship a little bit. he's waiting to see if his side of this alleged deals going to happen on monday. it is monday a holiday for moscow? i don't know if that was resolved. part of the deal we were told was that they are going to switch the leadership. he's going to get rid of the military chief. so, that is step one. beyond that, what is he going to do about ukraine? does he keep the foot on that gas, does he change pace does he cut and run and try to find some ways out of it? and what to do about the wagner forces, they mentioned it before. either they are, if they weren't involved in, this the uprising, then they can become part of the -- or they can have a partner of some kind. they are off the hook. they can just leave. that is thousands of and it

could be a sizeable expansion of the russian armed forces, they have to focus on all of those things, again while looking at ahead of the strategic elections. ahead including the nato summit on the border in lithuania three weeks ago. >> tomorrow will no longer be a holiday essentially today, because it is the morning in moscow now there is not going to be any holiday celebrated. i want to play something our friend and obvious expert ambassador michael mcfaul said earlier. >> throughout this war there's been lots of debates about putin needs to say face, he needs exit ramps, you've heard these metaphors 100 times. he will never quit. and yet here we have the play of that. putin was very tough in his address to the russian people, by the way. we are going to squash these traders, we're going to give them justice, and yet hours

later he backed away. >> mike is right these, absolutely right. president putin backed down all of the concern about putin being so tough not backing down, never taking an off ramp it's wrong. he has backed down, he blinked. both sides did. both sides did both prigozhin and putin both blinked. the swerved in the game of chicken. >> what do you think? >> i wouldn't be surprised if putin is making some phone calls to friends in china, or potentially even to saudi arabia trying to shore up the allies that he had, or at least had kept neutral against the nato allies who have an upper hand at this moment. now that upperhand only gets maintained if nato allies in

united states move beyond rhetoric of support, and do provide the resources and equipment that ukrainians have been asking for since day one. the longer this war continues the more it does play to putin's advantage. because it is being fought on the ukrainian home front. we saw a engagement happen in russia, but we did not see 80,000 people disappear from an entire city and that city be raised as it has been in ukraine. so the longer this continues the harder it is for ukrainians to get a true victory. and this is an opportunity, then. while putin is on the back foot, while he is still trying to shore up his own military engagement internally and how he manages his strategy for the nato allies to really go all in on supporting ukraine. but we haven't seen that vigor come out yet. so putin is going to be trying to shore up some of his support at the same time. >> and you think you will get that support,, kevin?

when he dials up china or saudi arabia now they've seen him blink or seen at least a shred of weakness. do you think they will be de there to take his call? >> i think they will because the whole premise behind these great state leaders has always been that nobody in the outside world has a say what goes on inside. that's why they can exist as autocrats and dictators. that's how they hold the security council close. so anything that looks like meddling instead of russia china's going to oppose. now are they going to come to his aid and save him? are they going to come to help out with the war? ? those are different questions, and maybe you would get some lower level support but i would see china jumping into this war. i do think when we are talking about exit ramps and putin blinking. how he responded to prigozhin

in this ridiculously have asked attempt to come to moscow i would not try to, i'm not saying the ambassadors doing this but other more -- i would not expect that putin would act in the same way or be as quick to blink or negotiate or have any kind of similar reaction if it was nato that was pressuring him. if it was the united states that was pressuring him. or some kind of outcome from ukraine. but again this is one of his friends, this is chef. a guy he brought up, a guy he thought he controlled. so i understand the idea that putin is not infallible, and he showed some cracked this week for sure, but anyone who thinks -- send the troops to crimea, do everything you can right now, that's a bridge perhaps too far for my comfort zone. >> ambassador, last word to you, and a reaction to the?

>> i would say send the attack and have them go after crimea. >> ambassador william taylor, kevin baylor, did you for being here on this very important of news coverage. when we come back, russia was already facing sanctions before the attempted rebellion. what it all means for vladimir putin when the 11th hour continues. continues. every day, more dog people, and more vets are deciding it's time for a fresh approach to pet food.

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let's start with what is your number one reaction to what we've seen transpire over the last 48 hours? >> for first and foremost it highlights putin's weakness. and to have all these fissures and cracks out in the open and for him, as the ambassador said before, for putin to blink so quickly shows that he didn't want this to escalate. he didn't want to have a distraction, he didn't want to expand -- he certainly didn't want infighting to be so public. and the more time he let it go on the more there was a chance that he could've had people -- prigozhin perhaps military defectors, and so on. this is not somebody i would normally call [inaudible] logical. these are both criminal thugs and more criminals. but he did have a moment of logic where you can see that it was in his interest to kind of deal as quickly as possible. but i do think he will exact revenge on prigozhin in belarus

in the near future. >> tom, with the most important thing to know? >> the most important thing is that it's not completely in control of his own government. and that he may have doubts about the reliability of the parts of his own military. but, there's nothing much what we can act on except to keep supporting ukraine. but that's a really important change not just in russia but this obvious the -- this is the most serious challenge the -- i would say that's the most important thing, the myth of vulnerability around vladimir putin. >> not just the last 48 hours but let's talk about the last

week. you've got sanctions piling up. now this crisis, how bad is this for russia not just putin specifically? >> so one of the things that i learned when i was at the white house and i handled syria was that you can't bank on these dictators follies. anyone who thinks that we are near the end, that putin is hanging by a thread and that this is it's all unraveling. i would caution against thinking that. what it does show is that there are these cracks and fissures that are very real, these vulnerabilities that are very real. putin was already weak, dictators are weak by nature which is why they crack down the way they do, which is why they behave the way they do. but he is as weak of position as he's ever been. and that makes a difference when you talk about how the ukraine war is going to end. usually wars and in diplomatic negotiation and the entire purpose of supporting ukraine the way we and our

international partners do is to weaken russia as much as possible so that in a diplomatic negotiation ukraine is in the strongest possible position. so that's what i am thinking. that there are signs they're finally, that we can be close to them that we can be nearing that. but that doesn't mean necessarily a putin is about to fall. >> he might not fall while his people continue to suffer. hog are, how better things in russia economically? >> so let's dive into this a little bit. russia's economy is still functioning and its currency pretty much bounced back, relatively. it was never that strong to begin with, but it relatively bounce back after last year's tough sanctions. the sanction regime against russia is one of the toughest out there, if not the toughest given russia's ties to the international financial system, given the reserves that they held here in the night states that they are no longer able to access. the sanctions imposed on russia are quite unprecedented, and

extremely tough. i can tell you having worked in sanctions for a long time the sanctions only work once they do. and what i mean by that is that as they continue to deteriorate the economy, as they continue to isolate the regime or the targets, it can be hard to see whether or not they're working because you don't necessarily see the immediate behavior change. but they take a long time by nature. and now russia has a few things that work in its favor and it's the fact that it continues to sell its russian oil to india and china. china is never going to change that but india in particular i think it's pretty much a slap in the face that they continue to buy russian oil and resell it. so the fact that they continue to be integrated, the fact they continue to sell russian oil is something that was very different when we sanctioned iran's oil, for example. this is what undermined the sanctions. sanctions, as i said, overtime, and i'll just highlight one statistic that was offered by the treasury department in march of this year which is

that due to western sanctions and exports the russian military lost over 9000 pieces of its equipment and are desperate to try and find the right pieces of equipment to fix their tanks and so on. so this is an example of how sanctions work. but it's going to take time to hit the economy. >> tom, zelenskyy is taking this moment to reiterate that russia is unstable, that they've gotten weaker. is that the right move for him right now? because putin being humiliated and unstable, that could really strike him to get crazier than ever. >> i don't think putin is particularly her by, at this point in a war of words with zelenskyy. i think zelenskyy is actually speaking to the international community and that's a really important problem for putin. it's not whether zelenskyy thinks --

it's whether china or india or others have just kind of accepted the fact of putin's continued rule of whether they think that he is unstable. i think whether he is taking him from his enemy, tweaking him from what just happened, i don't think matters to him as much as how brutal hit he just took internationally in the eyes of the world and in the eyes of his own people. >> assuming is people saw it, of course, he controls the media all across his country. hoggard i'm going to keep you both around move a lot more to dig into on the other side of the break. but when we come back world leaders again keeping a very close eye on this crisis. just as tom said, what does this mean to the international community? what will our next moves be? when the 11th hour continues. he 11th hour continues tourists that turn into scientists.

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keeping a close eye on the situation in russia tonight. the president spoke with the leaders of france, germany, and the uk to discuss the rebellion and reaffirm our support for ukraine. who got chemali and tom nichols still with us. hadar take us inside those conversations. how are world leaders reacting?

>> so everybody is likely trying to figure out how they can have an ordinary response to this development. i want to say that it's a complete surprise in that i think it's expected that you had these cracks and fissures continue to deepen, but nobody expected this kind of saga and certainly not to play out this way and certainly not like putin's best but or former best but i guess. that said i remember at times of crisis in the white house the first thing that happens is you are looking to coordinate with your allies. it starts at the lowest level where they are trying to figure out one of the cordon talking points, where the next steps, what are the policies. the way i would view it if i were in the white house you've got this key moment where putin's vulnerabilities are very publicly exposed now. so how are they going to take advantage of this when they

know that all of these international leaders and partners know and washington knows that the ultimate goal is diplomatic negotiations. so knowing that is now the time to ramp up and give ukraine the remaining weapons it has been asking for -- because there is this crucial moment where his vulnerabilities have been exposed. also, by the way doesn't look like it's going to be operating in ukraine anymore. you are still going to have the mercenaries like the joint russian military but they've taken quite a hit at their abilities and capabilities inside ukraine -- this is the type of conversations they are having inside the white house and with all of the partners europe nato et cetera everybody who is supporting ukraine right now. >> tom what do you think? >> one thing we'll worry about is you raise this in the last segments is that now putin is going to feel the need to lash out to really establishes

credit home and in the international community by doing something especially brutal. but the counter weight to that is that if you're going to do something like that you better have your military and political elites behind you. you've got a house all you reduction revel for you decide to go down that road. one thing putin, you can only hope that he learned from this whole mess is that bumbling into a war that really nobody around him wanted is a horrendous mistake. the wagner guys, prigozhin was arguing that they lead putin into the, that the ministry of defense led putin into this war. i do think that's the case, i think this was putin's idea from the get-go. so for him to say well now -- you have to be pretty sure that people have his back. i think the one thing after this weekend is that he can't be sure that everybody around

him has his back. >> will china expressed their support for russia after the rebellion. >> after the rebellion, and they said well, you know, stabilities important. but there was nobody in the middle of this saying vladimir putin's legitimate president of russia. i think again nato and washington were right to step back and say not our affair, we are not going to get into this. but the people that you might have expected to be a little more supportive of putin didn't really come out of the top brass until it was all over. i think that's revealing in itself. >> when they knew putin was okay, then they came in and said yeah, he's my guy. >> our pal, we knew he'd be okay. >> just typical diplomacy that once it's all over you say, of course, we always support stability and we have good

relations with the government and so on, that's just policy when one. >> once you already know who's basically going to win the game and it's the bottom of the ninth it's not that brave to say yeah, i'm on their team. who go to molly, tom nichols, thank you both for joining us on this very important night. for you at home, do not go anywhere. our special sunday night edition of the 11th hour continues right after the break. break. we're at war. -detonators charged. there's a chance that when we push that button, we destroy the world. we're in a race against the nazis. i have no choice. is it big enough to ead the war? to end all war? 7... 6... 5... 4... 3... -it's happening, isn't it? 2... 1... it's not too late to show summer's who's boss. and wayfair's got just what you need. they have all the top grills and gear.

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stephanie ruhle we are continuing our special coverage of the crisis in russia. it is monday morning in moscow and there are a lot of questions about what the next several days will bring. this weekend president vladimir putin faced the most serious threat to his leadership from a longtime ally amend putin essentially made yevgeny prigozhin