>> Who [SOUND] >> Did you?
[INAUDIBLE] >> For less than 24 hours,
there was a challenge to Russia's leadership by a private army who has
played a key role in Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
>> Over the weekend, the private mercenary group known as the Wagner Group
launched an apparent insurrection.
Although the head of the Wagner Group, the now former head of the Wagner Group,
claims that is not the case.
Now, while the alleged insurrection attempt failed,
it is worth getting into the details on how it all unfolded.
So let's start with this video, which gives us a little peek into how it
unfolded, and I'll fill in the blanks for you.
>> Late Friday in Russia, the leader of the Wagner Group, Yevgeny Prigozhin,
claimed that the Russian military killed an enormous amount of his troops in
an artillery strike.
And that his forces were going to cross into Russia,
calling it the March Of Justice.
Russia responded by issuing an arrest warrant for Pregozhin for mutiny,
denying his claims.
And a heavy military presence appeared in Moscow.
By early Saturday morning, Wagner forces were seen in Rostov, 600 miles south.
It's the main logistical hub for Russian forces operating in Ukraine.
Prigozhin said that his forces had taken the city.
>> All right, a little bit later in this story, we're gonna debate whether it
would have been better for Putin to win or this mercenary madman.
And that's the state of Russia as we speak.
But more facts first.
>> So it's worth understanding who Prigozhin is.
It's also important to understand that he was made to be who he is today,
thanks to Vladimir Putin's help.
But he is the leader of the Wagner Group.
His name is Yevgeny Prigozhin.
And he was a former ally to Russia,
he's no longer an ally considering the attack that took place.
Now he claims that this was not an attempt at a coup.
This was really about protesting the issues that he and
his mercenary group has had with the Russian military and
the leaders within the Russian military.
Now, he is known as Putin chef, he had been known as Putin chef because he got to
start focusing more on the catering business and restaurants.
He would later use those businesses to supply Russia's military with meals while
laundering money.
And he played a key or he played a central role in the war against Ukraine.
First by deploying his mercenaries on the front lines, and
later by recruiting heavily from prisons to bolster Moscow's depleted forces.
Wagner led the onslaught in Bakhmut,
which culminated in Putin declaring the city under Russian control,
his first significant territorial gain since last summer.
Now, why did this rebellion happen?
Well, apparently there have been internal tensions between Prigozhin and
the Russian military leaders and they've been simmering for months.
Apparently, he feels that they have kind of stood in the way of the weapons and
ammunition he needs, they have been stonewalling him and his mercenary group.
He accused the Russian generals of stonewalling his ammunition requests and,
as a result, blamed them for his fighters dying in heaps in Ukraine.
The dispute reached a boiling point last Friday, when Prigozhin accused Russian
forces of conducting a strike on his fighters at an encampment in Ukraine.
So as a result, he decided to launch this attack.
He called for Russians to join Wagner against Shoigu and
he's one of the leaders in the Russian military.
And the other individual he's been having issues with is Gerasimov.
He also accused the pair of lying about the war in Ukraine and
undercounting casualties, he says, quote, this is not a military coup, but
a march of justice, end quote.
Now, with that said, here's how Vladimir Putin responded to the attack and
how it unfolded later after the attack started, let's watch.
>> In a televised address, Russian President Vladimir Putin responded and
called for his military to stop the revolt.
>> [FOREIGN] >> Residents
of Rustov stocked up on gas and cleared grocery store shelves.
[NOISE] Meanwhile,
Wagner vehicles were on the move.
They went along the M4 highway, which goes northward straight to Moscow,
where roadblocks began going up.
About halfway, 300 miles from Moscow in Veronesh,
Russian military helicopters opened fire on them.
A warehouse and fuel tanks were destroyed and
Wagner forces reportedly shot down six Russian helicopters and a plane.
Wagner forces continued to move north, but
by the time they were within 125 miles of Moscow, a deal was reached.
>> Now, the deal was brokered by the Belarusan president and
you should be a little skeptical of it.
At least I feel skeptical of the terms of this deal.
So Alexander Lukashenko allegedly offered
Prigozhin a place to stay in Belarus, right?
So he will be in exile, he will remain in Belarus and
he will not face any prosecution or criminal charges based on this deal.
However, that deal is already incredibly shaky, right?
So for instance, Russian state media said that Prigozhin was still liable for
prosecution, and the warlord's whereabouts were unclear.
In an audio statement, Prigozhin gave no indication that Wagner was being wound up,
defending his troops as a crack force and saying that Lukashenko was open to
allowing them to stay operational in Belarus.
So I'm gonna get into more details about the disputes he has had with the Russian
military in just a moment, but I wanted to give you a chance, Cenk, to jump in.
>> Yep, so look, this guy's a complicated guy.
I think it's really interesting,
especially the dynamic between him and Putin.
I think what happens next is very interesting.
So first of all, everybody's universally saying that this shows Putin is weak.
In a sense, for sure, of course, he's got an internal rebellion that shows
some degree of lack of cohesion, weakness, wrong strategy, etc.
The points that Prigozhin is making about the Defense Minister and
the other minister involved seem like they are accurate and
that they have really bungled a war.
You should know this Wagner group was unfortunately the most
effective fighting force for the Russians inside Ukraine.
But on the other hand, he's now gone, who else is gonna challenge Putin?
So I think ironically, it might have made him stronger,
I'm not sure that there's a lot of internal enemies left anymore.
>> I don't necessarily agree with that.
So whether or not this makes Putin weaker or stronger, I think really depends
on whether these mercenaries are going to be absorbed within the Russian military.
Because the Russian military is, in fact depleted,
which is why they relied heavily on these mercenaries to carry out this war,
at least help them carry out major missions and operations within this war.
So without this group, I'm really curious to see what Putin is gonna do to kind of
make up for the fact that they no longer are able to help with this terrible war
that they've conducted in Ukraine.
>> Right, so there's two things about that, let me give you some details.
So the groups, I don't know if it's still this size, but
at its height was about 50,000 soldiers, that's a lot of folks, right?
But within the context of the Russian army, it's not the end all be all, but
they are the best fighting force that they have, apparently,
according to world experts.
So now, this particular conflict started when
the Defense Minister tried to gain control of the Wagner group and
everything else by getting them to sign a loyalty pledge to the Russian military.
Remember their mercenary?
>> And that Defense Minister, Sergei Shoigu, who Prigozhin has had issues with,
he's accused him of stonewalling and he is accusing Shoigu.
And it's a correct accusation of trying to absorb these mercenaries within
Russia's army.
>> So in the beginning, it looked like, the Russians are saying, okay,
those forces can come now after the conflict, right.
They could come into the Russian military now and
Prigozhin by himself is going to go to Belarussia and he was like, Belarus?
He's like, no, they're coming with me.
As you saw in that last quote that Anna read, you guys.
So we don't know how many of them have gone exactly,
but if the entire 50,000 went to Belarus, well,
that's probably stronger than their entire military, that country's military, right?
So that's a big giant question mark hanging out there.
And what are they gonna do next?
Because remember, they don't just operate in Russia.
>> Dozens of other countries.
>> They nearly took over the Central African Republic.
They run the diamond mines there and that Prigozhin is now a billionaire, okay?
So when I say he's complicated, complicated in a lot of directions,
in a lot of ways a madman, right?
>> No, he's not just a madman, he is an awful, evil individual.
>> I'm gonna get to that.
>> The mercenaries within this group, they're recruited from prisons and
they're rapists, they're murderers.
The way that they rape and murder while they're in war is pretty clear and
well documented.
So, look, I just want to be clear and get this out off my chest right now.
There is no conversation about, who's the good guy and who's the bad guy.
Both Putin and Prigozhin are absolute garbage.
>> Yeah, so I completely concur with that, but let's continue the conversation.
So number one on Prigozhin, the one thing I'll give him is,
the dude's a billionaire and he's still on the front lines, okay.
>> Frontlines of what?
>> Of the fighting, okay, he's on the battlefield as far as we can go.
>> I see what you are saying, okay.
>> Yeah, whereas, by the way, when he started advancing to Moscow,
apparently Putin ran to St. Petersburg.
So it is what it is, okay?
Now to the bad side, guys, look, it shows you how depleted and
awful the Russian military is that they have to rely on
mercenaries to recruit from Russian prisons.
And you know how you get Russian prisoners out or
any prisoners out in any country and get them to volunteer for potential death?
You promise them terrible things in return.
And that's what Anna's referring to.
And not just in Ukraine, but in Africa and other places they have operated,
rape is a normal form, apparently, of their warfare.
And so, this is some old school horrific mercenary crap, right?
And so they are not good guys in any way, shape, or form.
That's why throughout the weekend, I was thinking, as everybody's kind of weirdly
excited, right, there's an internal battle in Russia.
I'm like, wait, are you sure that it would be better for
these crazy mercenaries to take over Russia and have control of the nukes?
No, right?
>> But here's the thing.
I'm not sure, so when this story first broke and
everyone was referring to it as a coup attempt, I mean,
I was skeptical of that narrative, because how exactly would they succeed in that?
Do you get what I'm saying?
>> 100%, and that was gonna be my next point.
Which is, look, as he's advancing to Moscow, I thought,
I don't think this guy's thought it through.
>> No. >> So for
all that he's apparently effective at fighting and apparently good at corruption
and whatever other skills he might have, he's not the world's greatest strategist.
I'm like, if you were gonna make a move on Putin, you have to be right next to Putin.
You can't be days away, 500 miles down the road, you're never gonna make it.
The Russian military is not that depleted, right?
So you'll never gonna make it to Moscow, so what the hell were you thinking?
So I don't know, I don't know what he thought,
I don't know if he got worked up and just made an error in calculation.
I don't know what happens to them next.
But as he was advancing towards Moscow,
I was like, I guess it's good news that the Russia is in dissension.
But I do not want this guy to win as much as I despise Vladimir Putin.
>> So the only thing that I can see worth getting, for
lack of a better word, excited about is.
Without the help of this mercenary group and with a depleted Russian military,
there is some chance, I think a small chance,
that this war against Ukraine could come to an end, right?
I think that's probably what people might be excited about,
they might see a little opening there.
And that's really what I want.
Because at the end of the day, the people who get harmed are the Ukrainian
civilians, Russian civilians, if this war continues to happen within their borders.
And we've seen some attacks by the Ukrainian military on Russian soil.
And I don't want innocent civilians to get harmed as a result of this madman,
Vladimir Putin, and his invasion into Ukraine and
his decision to employ a terrible, evil mercenary group, right?
>> Yeah, now I think we're at the stage where we're in an assassination game.
They're so far apart from one another that, I mean, Putin has done this many,
many times.
You cross them, and two years later, you're eating a pastry that turns out
it's filled with chemicals that are going to kill you in about 13 seconds, right?
>> Or you fell from a hotel balcony to your desk.
>> Right, or you committed suicide by tripping over the couch and
falling out of the balcony.
And so in Prigozhin's case, though, he's the chef.
So I suspect that he has some assassination attempt,
bona fide's as well.
And that's the kinda game we're playing.
But the best news guys is that there was a rift in the first place and
that the guy's out of the country,
cuz him taking over the country would have been the very worst case scenario.
Now that he's out of the country, out of Russia and out of Ukraine,
if he doesn't come back in, now the incompetent Defense Minister is in charge.
And he was the one bungling the war so
badly that they needed these mercenaries in the first place.
>> And let me mention one other issue that Pregozhin allegedly had
with the higher ups in the Russian military.
So I had already mentioned Sergey Shoigu and the issues he's had with Shoigu.
But there's also Valery Gerasimov, tried to bar Pregozhin from further
recruiting mercenaries from the prison system, and he got real angry about that.
So those were some of the growing tensions that he
was experiencing with the leadership in the Russian military.
And after the, look, if it was really an attempt at a coup,
which I think would be incredibly stupid and really not strategic at all.
Later, he turned around and said, no, no, this wasn't really about a coup, okay?
This was really about showing our disdain for
how our group is being treated by the Russian military.
He said, quote, we did not have the goal of overthrowing the existing regime and
legally elected power.
We turned around so as not to spill the blood of Russian soldiers.
He said so in regard to why he made the decision to take
the deal that was brokered by the Belarusian president.
>> Yes, and I actually believe him.
It's good politics for him to say that, so you never know.
But it looks like throughout and I've read about him before,
he was super mad at the Defense Minister and the Jurassic Park guy.
And they had really been trying to undercut him.
He was undercutting them.
Remember that the bombs that went off in Moscow that might have been
also related to the Wagner group and these guys having this internal dissension.
Another important point is, as they were going through these towns,
they were getting high fives from the citizens.
Cuz remember, in Russia and there's one last twist, but
this guy's known as a super tough fighter against the Ukrainians.
He's not on the side of the Ukrainians, >> He's not on the side of the Ukrainians.
>> He's like the guy against the Ukrainians.
>> It seems like his issue is that, he feels Putin and
the current Russian military is not machiavellian enough in this war.
>> And not vicious enough, right?
So as he's getting high fives from the Russian civilians, the downside of that is
they're high fiveing a guy who's kind of a butcher, right?
The upside of it is, well, now you got some serious dissension within.
I don't know that there's any power brokers left anymore like I said earlier,
that would have enough strength to go get Putin.
But the country is starting to split apart at the seams a little bit.
Maybe that's good for them.
But one last bogey out there, and I will give Pregozhin one more piece of credit so
I'll be two amongst, otherwise horrific human being.
Is that, finally, when all of this started,
he did put out a statement saying, I don't know why we went into Ukraine.
Because the excuses we were told that they were about to attack us and
that they were gonna get NATO together and attack us isn't true.
And I was like, >> Interesting.
>> That's a twist I didn't expect, okay?
So that's a slightly positive thing.
The worst case scenario, and I kinda lived through this from afar in Turkey,
there's two people in Turkey that are very similar to this.
Both terrible guys, one more fundamentalist than the other.
When they were together, they were invincible.
When they split, they started fighting against each other so
much that they became a little bit more manageable.
But they Erdogan won but the other guy's worse.
And in this case, this is very similar.
But the worst case scenario is, Putin goes, yeah, I don't know what I'm doing
with this loser Defense Minister, you're fired/assassinated/ a bathtub fell on you.
Okay, and Pregozhin, you're the new Defense Minister.
That's your worst case scenario.
>> My God.
But I see Putin as a bit of an egomaniac.
So I don't know if he would be able to do that, but we'll see.
>> Yeah, I agree, I think that his ego will probably get in the way.
But if I was him, I would certainly be considering that.