There's also new reporting tonight
on what actually happened
when Yevgeny Prigozhin
launched that military assault
inside Russia and started
sending his troops toward Moscow.
Still not clear
exactly why he stopped that assault
and what deal may have been made.
But tonight, we do have a clearer picture
of what may have been going on
in the Kremlin in the early hours,
the incursion by a Wagner forces.
It comes from the Washington Post.
Their headline,
Putin appeared
paralyzed and unable
to act in First Hours of rebellion.
Shane Harris shares
the byline on that story, joins us now
Shane, can you just walk us
through your reporting
of what happened in the Kremlin
during the first hours
of the Prigozhin rebellion,
because it paints
a very different picture
of Vladimir Putin than people are used
to seeing or believing.
Yeah, that's right, Anderson.
I mean, really
I mean, to put it succinctly,
what happened
was not what officials
were expecting to see,
which is namely
that Vladimir Putin
was not apparently giving orders
that were then traveling down
the chain
of the military command
to local commanders
and security officials
who would have been trying
to stop Prigozhin
on this lightning strike
that he was making up north to Moscow.
And as sources describe it to us,
there was paralysis and indecision
coming from Moscow.
And from the leadership.
CIA Director Bill Burns said
last week that Russian leaders
appeared to be adrift
as this incredible scene was playing out.
So really kind of a picture
not of a Russian leader in command,
but one that was indecisive
and potentially afraid
to to to try to counter
Prigozhin, this warlord
who depended on
so much in the war in Ukraine,
which is such a blow
to kind of the mystique
of Vladimir Putin mystique.
He himself has worked hard to
try to create
Yeah, absolutely.
And I think that's one reason why
this was such a telling series of events.
I mean, we all watched as Prigozhin
really directly challenged
and tried to undermine, I think, Putin's
rule and authority.
And he said
his beef was with the military leadership
in the defense establishment.
But really
that's also a shot
at the Russian president himself.
And now to see that essentially there was
there was silence
and indecision,
people down the chain
waiting for Putin to tell us, you know,
what do you want us to do
after he had gone on national television
and talked about trying to squelch
this rebellion?
Is very much at odds with that portrait
that he portrays of someone
who is in total command,
who demands authority,
who demands loyalty.
This seemed to be somebody who is
on his back foot
and really not clear
on what exactly he wanted.
And that's
even sure that he had a plan
for how he wanted to counter this.
And all the more interesting,
because you report
that he actually
had some advance warning.
He had intelligence from Russian
security services.
How do you know
how far in advance or what did he know?
Our sources tell us that about two days
in advance,
he was given warning
that something was afoot,
that Prigozhin may
have been planning something.
And there were indications of that
among Western intelligence as well.
And there were
fortifications made at key
establishments in Moscow,
including around the Kremlin.
Weapons were handed out.
So at least in that initial phase,
it does seem like
this is someone who is getting ready
for some kind of attack.
But then these orders on what to do
after that never really come.
And then, of course,
we all sort of
watch as Prigozhin stops
and this deal gets hammered out
with the president of Belarus.
So still things that we don't know
about that in particular
and why Prigozhin ultimately stopped.
But Putin Putin did have some warning
that this person
who he came to depend
on was potentially going to make a move.
And as we saw, as he did
in the military headquarters
in the south of Russia
and then turned his sights on Moscow,
it was also interesting
to see kind of the reaction,
I guess I should say, lack of reaction
among local officials
in some of the regions between
Rostov on Don and in Moscow.
Yeah, I think this is where
they would have been looking up
the chain of command
to the military headquarters
and saying essentially,
what is it that you want?
And with no word coming down,
they were really kind of left
to interpret this for themselves.
And again,
this is much more,
I think, in
keeping with the image
that we've seen, frankly,
of the Russian military
for more than a year
now in Ukraine,
where the lack of
central communication coordination
that appears to be often
a kind of lumbering apparatus
where the left hand often doesn't
know what the right is doing
But this, again,
I think, does go squarely down
to Putin
as somebody
who would have had to give orders
in this kind of urgent situation
for what he wants done.
The people on the locals on
the ground were just sort of left
listening and waiting
and trying to make it up for themselves.
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 of that 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 tier
you of top tier
you officer, he's
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 watching 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 called was called
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 in a very good story
where they
we called some of the participants
and some of the officials
that the 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 him
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 as though 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.
Well, I mean, what is interesting,
though, 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 one team, 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.
Of those 16 2018 again they
they tried that
this is the so-called fancy
their 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. Christo, thank you very much.