And I want to go now to
Bill Browder, longtime Putin critic.
He's wanted in Russia
and the retired Army Lieutenant General
Ben Hodges.
And I appreciate
both of you very much, Bill.
So obviously,
we haven't seen Prigozhin
since that armed rebellion 12 days ago.
The part of the deal that was announced
was he was going to Belarus,
but Lukashenko says
he's in Saint Petersburg,
maybe in Moscow,
and we're seeing but he's a free man.
He can you can do whatever he wants.
And I talk to him on the phone yesterday,
even though they've raided his houses
and taken everything out of it
in a humiliating end
with all these wigs and everything else
that they're parading around.
What is going on here, Bill?
Well, I think first and foremost, I mean,
he is he's
committed the cardinal
sin of making Putin look weak.
Putin prides himself
on being a strongman dictator.
And Prigozhin basically put a whole slice
that that reputation
in half by marching on Rostov.
Nobody stood in his way.
They were cheering him
on, taking selfies with him,
going on to Virgin Edge.
And then
getting within 2 hours of Moscow.
He's kind of a folk hero in Russia,
and he makes Putin
look like a very weak man.
And so
what's going on right now is
the Russians are in a state of apoplexy.
Putin particularly because
he's been challenged,
his entire
sort of strongman
image has been challenged So Prigozhin
surely doesn't want to be found
right now.
I can imagine that
if they're doing all these movies
and opening
these criminal cases against him,
they would love to kill him
if they could get their hands on him.
And so he's probably gone to ground.
He's a very dangerous man.
He has a whole army of mercenaries
and people loyal to him. Yes.
And and what we're seeing right now is
you think he's gone to ground and
he's alive in Russia.
Who knows?
I mean, he has so many different ways.
We saw the wigs we saw the passports.
We saw the cache.
There was a helicopter,
you know, in his front yard.
He's got all I mean,
this man is incredible
in terms of the tools that he has
to, you know, evade capture.
I mean, he he's
he's the most cold
blooded killer out there.
And so he's not going to allow himself
to be handcuffed
and carted away to Lubyanka, the prison.
Well, it's not that's not happened.
And so,
you know,
everyone says you know,
how much longer does he have to live?
Well, you know,
he's got all these killers
on his payroll.
How much longer do these guys,
the FSB, Putin himself,
have to live with this type of scenario
playing itself out?
I mean, General Hodges,
it is incredible
and it is incredible
what they're showing us, right.
That he's nowhere to be found.
And as
they're rating
his houses and showing those wigs
and those things,
what does this say to you
from a military perspective?
Putin says the deal is,
well, we're told right.
The deal is promotion goes to Belarus.
Belarus says,
oh, he's not here,
he's in Moscow
or Saint Petersburg,
and he's completely M.I.A.
So three things there.
First of all, how can anybody
seriously consider negotiations
with Russia
and expect
that they would live up to any agreement
or that they'll be transparent
in any way?
I mean, the
the circus
that we've been watching
in the last couple of weeks, tragic
and that people are getting killed.
But there are a lot of people
that think that we should push Ukraine
to negotiate with Russia.
This is who you're negotiating with.
Secondly,
the kind of activities
that we have seen here
over the last several days,
including when President Putin wilted,
when he was pushed into a corner,
he wilted and turned to Lukashenko
and they made this deal with Prigozhin,
which obviously is not turning out
like everybody thought
or like I thought anyhow.
But that's what he did
when he was put in a corner.
So it did show
weakness exactly as Bill said.
But also, finally,
this is not what happens in an army
that's confident
that it's on the path to victory.
So this is this really reflects
uncertainty and lack of confidence
in the government and in the Army.
So, Bill,
I want to play some more from
that Lukashenko press conference
where he took all those questions
from journalists and our Matthew Chance.
He said he spoke to Prigozhin yesterday
and then unprompted,
he said this about promotions, safety.
Let me play that
Listen, if you don't know
what will happen to Prigozhin next.
Well, everything happens in life.
But if you think that Putin
is so malicious
and vindictive
that he will kill Prigozhin tomorrow.
No, this will not happen at
all. Right?
It brings it up out of the blue.
So that's significant.
Then he makes
his claim of that will not happen.
I mean,
what do you read into that statement
from Lukashenko?
Well, first of all,
all of these guys,
Lukashenko, Putin, Prigozhin,
you can't believe a word that they say.
I mean, they lied through their teeth.
They lie openly.
So you really can't interpret
anything from that.
I mean, what I would say is that that
you know,
this guy,
Prigozhin,
organized an armed
rebellion to take out Putin.
The normal reaction to
that would be for Putin
to arrest Prigozhin,
bring him to Red Square
and set up a guillotine
and chop his head off.
The fact that he didn't do
that is remarkable.
The fact that they let him go somewhere,
whether it's Belarus or somewhere else.
We just yesterday
they went after
they after when he was doing his raid,
they or his
his rebellion, they raided his office
and they seized $111 million of cash
And then as I understand it, yesterday
they returned the cash.
It makes no sense.
And so what they're saying, there's
so much more to the story
that we don't see on the surface.
And you alluded to it
earlier in the report that he's got
17 different countries
rebellions in
Africa, where
he's got mercenary operations
which is essentially the
the entire foreign policy of Russia
and Africa that's under his command.
And so he may be just too big to
make out.
I don't know.
But but it's it's
doesn't make any sense on the surface.
And therefore, there's
a lot of information
that we don't know, obviously
guiding their their actions.
General Hodges,
I want to ask you one thing
crucial to the battlefield
in addition to all of this. Right.
Which could dramatically change
all of it.
And that is these cluster munitions.
CNN's reporting
the US is expected to announce
a new military package to Ukraine,
which is going to finally include
those cluster munitions. Right.
Highly controversial.
Banned by 100 countries,
not by the United States or Russia.
Incidentally,
they scatter
small explosives around the target.
So in a civilian area, it can cause
unbelievable devastation.
Ukraine says they need it to hit
clumps of Russian soldiers
and that they've been saying this,
you know, since the very beginning.
How significant is this if Ukraine gets
these cluster munitions, that
this will
be a significant capability for Ukraine?
When you talk about
employing them against Russian trenches,
particularly the Russian trenches,
which as we've
all seen,
do not have
the overhead cover that you would expect
from professional soldiers.
So this kind of munition
will be devastating against the Russians.
Who are sitting in these trenches,
which will help, obviously,
with the breakthrough
that Ukraine is trying to achieve.
And they're also devastating
against artillery
when the Ukrainians
catch Russian artillery
in a woodland somewhere,
this munition will really cause problems
for them.
And fortunately,
the United States has
a couple of million of these rounds.
And so it will help
make up the deficiency
in artillery ammunition.
Unfortunately,
it doesn't make up the deficiency
in not providing the attack.
No, it doesn't.
But, of course,
President Zelensky was telling us
it would be crucial,
crucial anything to close that
artillery gap.
As you point out,
that they just don't have enough.
All right.
Thank you both so very much.
I appreciate it.