You have the mercenaries.
Mercenary groups
like Wagner, with Yevgeny Prigozhin
looking over Putin's shoulder,
getting ever more powerful,
make him more money out of this war.
And that also is a kind of a threat
for Putin to people
other than him with getting more power.
All right, Nick, thank you very much.
Live from Kramatorsk.
OUTFRONT now, Boris Bond.
He was a Russian diplomat
for 20 years
and resigned in protest
over Putin's war in Ukraine.
Boris I appreciate your time tonight.
One person we've spoken a lot about
on this show
who appears to be close to Putin now
seems to want to run this war
in a much bigger way of
is Evgeny Prigozhin,
the head of the volunteer group,
paramilitary organization.
Do you think promotion could take over?
What is his role with Putin?
Well, it's a very
interesting moment in all of this
campaign that Mr.
Prigozhin has become so influential
and it really,
really is the person
which can decide a lot of, you know,
can make a lot of decisions
So I think he is
somehow a favorite
of sledging and Putin for now.
And Vladimir
Putin obviously interests him
with the most difficult and challenging
missions on the frontline, because Mr.
Prigozhin controls
these private military companies
like Vladimir is one of them.
And they are known.
They are notorious
for being the most effective
the most cruel
of all Russian armed structures
in which are acting now in Ukraine.
But I believe that Mr.
President has
no political future in Russia
because he has no social bases
and he has no allies
within the Russian establishment,
because all of the Russian establishment
I mean, decision makers, such as army
generals or special service people,
they hate him and despise him
as a former criminal
and someone who has no
connections because
you know jumped up man or something.
So I would not
overestimate his significance for now.
Do you read anything into this, though?
You don't want to
overestimate his significance,
but does his rise
and the fact that you say
so many in power despise him?
What does this mean about Putin
that Putin is seems to
seems to be letting him in more?
Is it a sign of Putin's isolation?
Is it a sign
others are turning against Putin?
How do you see it?
Well,
I would like to see it as the sign
of a further isolation
of Putin, of course, because
and his frustration
that Putin is obviously disappointed
in his army,
his generals, which cannot deal brief,
you know, victory over Ukraine,
which they had promised
to him, obviously,
before the war started.
And of course, he now
seems that maybe proportion with his,
you know,
unscrupulous methods of war can
have some victories. Who knows?
But of course, but any and any of this
will lead to further destabilization
within the Russian elite.
It is obvious one way or another,
Putin will be more dependent
on Prigozhin and his like
or he will stay more
dependent on army generals and FSB
generals, for instance.
And those two groups
will be in constant fight
with each other that maybe Mr.
Putin is counting on this.
So they are they fighting each other
and he can still be a part of this fight.
But for how long? I don't know.
At one point in
your career,
you worked for the Foreign
Minister Ministries Department
for Nonproliferation and Arms Control,
and that was obviously related
to weapons of mass destruction.
The latest we have from U.S.
intelligence is that senior Russian
military officials
have discussed specifics
how under
what conditions
to use
a tactical nuclear weapon in Ukraine.
Do you think the possibility of this
is increasing at all
I believe
there is still the possibility
of using nuclear weapons
on the Russian side.
And of course,
because, of course, every general
wants to use
whatever means he has in order
to gain a victory.
And Russian generals are no exceptions.
And, of course, they see that they
they have no prospects
of winning this war or even,
you know,
to have
a kind of an acceptable stalemate
for Russia.
And, of course, I think they naturally,
they're discussing the scenarios
of how they could deploy nuclear weapons
but they don't think well.
I think even to me, as a non-specialist,
an expert in military
and military affairs,
you know, secret military affairs,
it is obvious that
even if they use new tactical
nuclear weapons,
it will not change the course of the war
because it will have
very limited military gains
and it will have a devastating
political consequences for Russia.
Our Boris, I appreciate your time.
Thank you so much.