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>>> We're following several new
developments this morning out of
Russia.
President Vladimir Putin just
moments ago addressing law
enforcement involved in this
weekend's armed rebellion by the
Wagner mercenary group telling
the troops that they, quote,
stopped a civil war.
Russia also announced it is
dropping charges against the
Wagner group and its leader
yevgeniy prigozhin and the
mercenaries are preparing to
hand over heavy military
equipment to Russian troops.
Joining us now is bill brouder,
once the largest foreign
investor in Russia and now one
of the Kremlin and president
Putin's significant enemies.
He singled him out in 2018.
He is also the author of
"Freezing order" true story of
money laundering murder and
surviving Vladimir Putin's
wrath.
Bill, thank you so much for
joining us.
I think I actually want to start
there because throughout the
course of this weekend and in
the days since, I have
constantly wondered when is the
crack down happening.
There's no way that yevgeniy
prigozhin can be allowed to just
go to Belarus or go to Africa or
wherever he might want to go.
That seems like an
inevitability.
Is it?
>> Yeah.
Basically Putin can't stand --
he can't tolerate being
disrespected.
This is -- the psychology of
Russian leadership is like the
psychology of a prison yard.
In order for Putin to have been
the leader for 23 years, he's
had to be the -- seem to be the
meanest guy in the prison yard
the one that would cause damage
to anybody who even looked at
him the wrong way.
And yevgeniy prigozhin didn't
just look at him the wrong way,
he disrespected him in the most
massive, humiliating way.
It's not just a question of what
happens to prigozhin but what
happens to all the other people
who either didn't immediately
declare loyalty to Putin during
that day or who kept quiet or
who perhaps were even working on
the other side.
In my opinion, the only way that
Putin can stay in power is for
him to reassert his authority
and the only way he can do that
is to become extremely
aggressive, dangerous and
violent towards all sorts of
people who he doesn't believe
are loyal to him.
I think there's going to be a
huge sort of purge, crackdown,
whatever you want to call it, of
the elite, of the government, of
the military and of the
oligarchs for Putin to
reestablish his authority.
>> We saw prigozhin but we
haven't seen any of the inner
circle or close advisers to
president Putin side with
prigozhin or speak out of turn
at some point.
Why would this be a threat to
his power if no one else is
standing up right now.
>> Well, because the only reason
that Putin has been able to stay
in power is that everyone is
scared of him.
And what this showed is that you
can basically -- a group of I
think it was 8,000 men could
drive along the highway and take
over rostov, a major military
base and drive to the next town
and nobody said anything.
The people took selfies with
them and hugged them.
And so if Putin can't exert his
power by just existing, then all
of a sudden other people will
say, look, this is a very
profitable job to have to be the
president of Russia.
You can get hundreds of billions
of dollars if you do this job.
There's a huge incentive for
anybody to have a go at him.
It looks like he's weak, they
will have a go.
That is the -- it's the
psychology of a prison yard
there where, you know, unless he
can become -- he can be seen
again as the scariest, most
brutal guy, his days are
numbered.
>> I was struck yesterday former
ambassador John Bolton told my
colleague poppy, don't
underestimate the possibility
that Putin could turn this to
his advantage.
Do you think that's overstating
his 23 years of ability to do
such things given what we saw
over the course of the last four
days?
>> Well, what I know about Putin
is that he is slow to react to
things.
Stuff happens and then, you
know, a day, a week, a month
might go by, but I guarantee you
that Putin is now sitting there
saying, okay, how do we get
control over the situation?
He can use the situation to
organize and justify a massive
crackdown.
And it wouldn't be unusual.
We saw the same thing with
erdogan in Turkey, coup attempt
made against him.
He arrested everybody in sight.
Literally 50,000 people went to
jail in Turkey.
People he didn't trust.
And I'm almost certain that
Putin will do that.
If he does do that, if he takes
this coup as his -- as a sort of
impetus to even crack down
further, then he may very well
end up more control over the
Russian situation than he had
before.
It could also go the other way.
That's why we're in this period
of really dramatic uncertainty.