Trevor Reed, the
former US
Marine who was freed from Russia
in a prisoner swap
just over a year
ago, was just injured
while fighting in Ukraine.
Now, Reid
was wrongfully detained
in Russia for nearly three years in this.
Obviously that's
and return to the US
sent to a key hospital
evacuated to Germany
to receive medical care.
One U.S.
official telling
CNN there now are concerns
about what effect
this could have on future negotiations
to free Americans
who are still detained in Russia,
people like Paul Wieland.
OUTFRONT now, Crystal grows up.
The lead
Russia investigator for Bellingcat
He's been placed on
Russia's most wanted list for his work,
which includes uncovering
the man who poisoned the top.
Putin critic
Alexei Navalny, who,
of course, is languishing now
in a prison in a work camp.
So, Crystal.
Trevor Reid gets free
and a prisoner swap.
And this was
this was obviously a huge focus.
Took a long time to have happen.
He shows up in Ukraine,
gets injured there.
How does Putin see this?
Well,
we have to be honest about it
is not a perfect look for Trevor
or for the United States here,
because it seems like
it's all a government conspiracy.
It looks like
it will be presented
by put in the next few days.
There hasn't been that much coverage.
It was covered
there was an event in Russia,
but not much.
Instrumentalized version
of this event in Russian media.
They're still waiting for instructions
how to present this.
I'm sure that will get those tomorrow,
but they will try to present this
as you see, it's old.
There's a lot
of mercenaries from America.
There's a lot of actual involvement
of American Marines in the war.
They will probably inflate the numbers
from the approximately
thousands thousand Americans
who are fighting there
as volunteers to maybe 10,000.
So I think this is the angle they used to
say, look,
this is what happens
when we let somebody go
in a prisoner swap, so don't do it again.
I mean, does it really go there?
Well,
I mean, of course
they will try to raise the price
of their negotiation leverage
because of this example
in future negotiations.
And we know that
there's currently
no negotiation for a number of
for two Americans
and maybe other
prisoners that are held in by Russia.
And of course, Russia
will use this as leverage to say,
you see we it's so hard for us to do this
because you sent them back to war.
But remember that one of the most desired
prisoners that
Russia wants to get back is a convicted
killer, is a convicted assassin
that's been prosecuted
who assassinated
somebody on behalf of President
Putin in Germany.
There's not even much denial of that
by the Kremlin.
So it's going to be a hard moral argument
to make.
Well, we can't release
even the journalist,
but we want to have
a convicted killer released.
So that will not be a strong argument.
All right.
Evan Gross Kovic, of course,
who is also awaiting his fate.
As every day passes here.
So this comes, Krista,
as The Washington Post reports
that on the night of the rebellion,
the Putin was essentially paralyzed
and unable
to act decisively in those initial hours.
He was silent.
So lower level officials
at level officials were waiting
and they were waiting for somebody
to give guidance on
what was going to happen,
what they were going to do.
Your reporting
also shows
something quite powerful about
what was happening in those hours.
Yeah, we actually broke the story
on your program
that in the night of the supposed coup
of the abortive coup,
top generals from the military
intelligence were not as interested
as you would expect them to be
in resolving the situation.
And when we analyzed further
those phone calls,
hundreds and hundreds of phone
calls of managerial officers,
we found that
the top jury officer
in charge of waging the war
in Ukraine,
the top GRU, a top tier
officer, is the number two
in the whole jury system.
And who was in charge of Ukraine?
He calls his girlfriend
more than 40 times
in the middle of the night.
It seemed like they were binge on the
on a show like talking to each other.
What do you think will happen next?
He only calls his colleague
a total of ten times,
like the top ranking colleague
that he calls
cold, ten times with 40 times
his girlfriend.
This is not serious.
Clearly,
he was in the middle of a potential coup.
Yeah, That's not what you would be doing.
No, no.
But we also know
and we've reported our investigative part
of the insider report
a couple of days and a very good story
where they
we called some of the participants
and also some of the officials
that agreed to talk to us
to ask them what they did
on that day, on that evening.
And many of them
were honest enough to say, well,
we just waited it out
when one of them even said,
I continued drinking
because I didn't
want to be summoned to work.
I just didn't want to get in,
take a side in this.
But they just waited there on the set.
Yeah.
So now which is really incredible, right?
Not not rushing to the defense.
Not and not even just
just the gossiping on it,
as you say, almost.
It seems
So you're reporting
also on some drone attacks
against Russia.
Now, we've obviously
heard about the Moscow attack this week
and against Crimea,
but you have some new details there.
What I mean,
what is interesting now
is that this must have been
the most sort
of numerous attacks by drones
performed by Ukraine during the war.
We count
I counted
at least 20 maybe 21 drones
launched on that day two days ago
to Russia from Ukrainian territory.
But there's no doubt
that these didn't come from places
inside of Russia.
These came from Ukraine territory.
That is very,
very important because while in Crimea,
where approximately 17 drones
were reported sighted and some of them
one of them hit a munition depot,
it takes a much bigger power
of these drones to reach Moscow.
And that's at least 600
kilometers,
about 400 miles
to get from the closest border
point to Moscow.
And at least three of these drones,
three of these drones reached Moscow.
Two of them hit
locations downtown in Moscow.
One of them hit
Komsomolskaya Prospect Number 20.
That is the address
that houses
the most secretive cyber attack
cyber offensive unit of the year.
The same unit
that actually interfered
with elections in the United States
as I was 16 2008.
Again, they they tried.
This is the so called Fancy
Bear Headquarters,
a Russian
a Ukrainian drone got all the way there.
And it's true
it didn't destroy the building but it
you could see it's
it's debris
just in front of the secretive location.
It's not a good sign for Russia
and another
another drone was found
crashed right next
to another
communications facility
which coordinates all the communication
between the Navy ships of Russia.
Again, this is just a show of force.
And a future attack with more drones
is like it's actually caused
much, much more damage. Right.
And they have the
and they have the intel to know
exactly where
all these places are, which,
you know, showing. Showing that proof.
All right, Chris, thank you very much.