but even if the threat is over and it s not at all clear that saturday s turn around was, in fact, the end, what did the flash of descent do to russia itself, not the government or security services but the people. what message did russians get over the weekend? what did they see when yevgeny prigozhin s tanks move toward the capital? what did they feel when his troops reportedly shot down several russian helicopters? that s according to ukraine s air force. what did they hear when vladimir putin called prigozhin a traitor and compared his threat to 1917. we re going to ask masha gessen of the new york. the russia public saw something extraordinary, a choice, it will something that changes russia even if it doesn t alter putin s control in the short term. let s get our reporting and the news from russian tv that vladimir putin will speak tonight. joining me now from moscow is nbc news chief international correspondent keir simmons. so keir, this news that he s going to speak,
yesterday. but still so many questions about the wagner group s descent into russia. it ended almost as quickly as it began. yevgeny prigozhin s mercenaries got within 120 miles of moscow, the only to turn back to the races after a deal was brokered to prevent the armed rebellion. a spokesperson for the kremlin saying the wagner group leader will avoid prosecution and be exiled in belarus. his troops will be given the option to join russian military forces. prigozhin seen leaving russia last night as crowds cheered him on. meanwhile, new reporting revealing that u.s. spy agencies had indications, quote unquote, days earlier that prigozhin has been stockpiling weapons with plans to take on russian defense officials. i m obviously not going to comment on intelligence matters. what i can say is this, i think it s been no secret that many people over many months and that these tensions were rising, they were brewing. prigozhin was already saying extraordinary things about russi
wait so long to tell us. news outlet.leak ia french we know it lasd three hours according to demetri peskov, he doesn t y at exactly was discand that it involved 35 people. they are saying all unit commanders and the leadership of the complain including prigozhin. this seems to be deliberately ambiguous. they are not saying whether these are the commanders of the overall so-called special military operation, so ministry of defense figures, the kremlin would not comment on whether any representative of the ministry of defense was there, but they do say that putin listened to the explanations provided by the commanders and offered them further options for deployment and a farther combat use, again, major questions around that. does this signal that wagner could still have a role to play in this conflict. that of course is crucial to ukraine. we still don t know by the way where yevgeny prigozhin is, if this meeting was on the 29th we don t know where he has gone since then. there have be
spoken with has confirmed where yevgeny prigozhin is, the leader of wagner. senator mark warner suggested he may be the minsk already. do you think he is threat of kidnapping, maybe of assassination, clearly how angry putin was today and how openly he s expressed that anger? i think even a casual observe knows, you are not safe. like i was telling people, i m assuming he s having someone testing his food. i m assuming prigozhin is being very careful because putin has tried to take out his enemies in london. so, i don t think this man at all feels safe, which is probably why we haven t seen much of him. and i think if you re putin, every tv station in the world is talking about how weak he looks and he s going to feel the need
they stay out of the fight and take pictures of themselves. so i think the thing that came out of this, if we continue to support the ukrainian military and we get out of this idea that we have to give vladimir putin an off-ramp, we have to give him honor, and we just say, look, we have to have a victory for ukraine. we don t need ukraine invading russia, of course. nobody is even talking about that. ukraine isn t even talking about that. we need ukraine to win this war. it may be much easier to win than we think. certainly it is winnable. and frankly, that s how we stop this continued vladimir putin fear and this continued fear of russia, is to have them actually lose in ukraine. just from a tactical standpoint, also, they were 120 miles away. prigozhin s forces were 120 miles away from moscow. could they have gotten the chechens hopscotched ahead of them in time to keep fighting from breaking out on moscow s outskirts, audible to those inside. one of the things that, of course, as