tapper. wolf blitzer is over in the situation room. have a great day. happening now, president biden just announced new action aimed at easing student debt after the u.s. supreme court blocked his loan forgiveness program. he s slamming the ruling as wrong and accusing republicans of hypocrisy. we re also following the fallout from the high court s other major decision today putting limits on lgbtq protections. the senators warn the ruling may open the door to discrimination of all sorts of protected minority groups. and growing questions right now about the fate of the russian mutiny leader yevgeny prigozhin. are kremlin spies plotting to kill him as ukraine s intelligence chief claims? i ll ask top white house official john kirby about that and much more. welcome to our viewers here in the united states and around the world. i m wolf blitzer, and you re in the situation room. we begin with today s one-two punch by the u.s. supreme court, decisions limiting lgbtq protect
good eveningmism i m anderson cooper in new york. this is special coverage of the extraordinary and still confusing events we have been reporting on for the past 24 hours out of russia and of what will be a critical day ahead for vladimir putin. what we witnessed over the last 24 hours appears to have been the most serious threat to putin s hold on power in decades. at this hour we know a lot, but it s important to point out there is a lot that is not known. for instance, what will be the fate of the man in the back seat of this suv, prigozhin, cheered by some as he appeared to be leaving the southern russian town, his mercenary force had just occupy. this video taken just hours after he called off his mercenaries from their push toward moscow and agreed to a deal brokered by russia s ally, belarus. translator: therefore realizing all the responsibility for the fact that russian blood will be shed from one of the sides, we turn our columns around and leave in the opposite d
delivered to allies and partners on saturday. when all this unfolded with mr. prigozhin he got on the phone and talked to our allies and partners and said we ve got to stay focused on ukraine. i think there s speculation about whether wagner is going to go into belarus and whether from belarus they re going to be able to conduct attacks and operate inside ukraine. we certainly respect president zelenskyy as commander in chief and his ability to make decisions on his force posture as he sees fit. i don t know what s going to happen with wag nar and their defense capability going forward. we talked about this earlier today, wagner is still active in africa, and we downgraded some information today what they ve been doing in mali, for instance. and we re still putting sanctions on this group. we re not taking it for granted they re somehow going to dissolve and go away and not present a threat. before i let you go final question on the state
agreed to fight for wag nar. what happens now to the russian side? that s a good question. and we do know that the wagner mercenaries who had fought for months to try to capture bakhmut, after they declared they had captured what was left of that city, recall it was basically destroyed, they then made a big show, and prigozhin himself made a big show of withdrawing from the city and handing it over to the russian ministry of defense and the regular armed russian forces. so we don t know where they ve been really since then and how active they have been on the front lines, which part of the front lines they ve been active on until all of a sudden we saw them packing up their gear and essentially invading russia and launching a mercenary mutiny. that s something i never thought we d be reporting on. but there are now big questions. were the ukrainians able to exploit any of this confusion yesterday? it all finished in just a day, so i don t know if this will provide the ukrainians enou
according to the plan, he said, we still don t really know what that plan was or is now. russia says belarus is where prigozhin is now heading kwet the kremlin also says he doesn t know where he is right now. wagner forces were also seen leaving their position from the military headquarters. they claimed to capture not only that headquarters but mittitary sites in the city and a second russian city after crossing the border from ukraine. here s new video as they left. wagner! wagner! people chanting wagner, wag nar. the wag nar fighters apparently being cheered and hugged. they ll return to their base and sign contracts with the russian military. keep in mind all of this coming hours after russian forces barrelled up the highway toward moscow until prigozhin announced