Attacking Shoygu News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

sk crisis in russia. i'm michael smerconish. putin warns those involved in the mercenary group will be punished. p prigozhin says they killed a, quote, huge amount of his men. a long-time ally of the kremlin, he claimed troops had taken control of facilities in the russian cities of voronezh and rostov-on-don without firing a shot. one general called it a coup d'etat, but prigozhin deniesoco. there was an announced a criminal investigation of prigozhin and they were to stop and detain their leader. in an address to the nation, putin said this. >> translator: i repeat, any internal ...

>> so rostov was the operational objective. to me, it's quite clear why. when i was in government, when i was in moscow, i spent enormous amounts of time driving up and down the road from moscow to rostov. this was -- you know, i had a job to observe and report for the u.s. government at the beginning of this war, in 2014. i know this terrain quite well. rostov is the seat of russian military power. it is the headquarters of the southern military district. it is the joint operational command for the war in ukraine. to me, if he wanted to undermine shoygu and plant his flag, the first objective...

Attacking shoygu and the general for not doing enough. with that rope, prigozhin became increasingly emboldened. i think the objectives are shiftingshift i ing. now, it's clear putin is targeting prigozhin directly. he is saying prigozhin is going to face consequences. the wagner folks that follow him are going to face consequences. it's now an existential threat for wagner to extract major concessions from the putin regime in order to survive. so this is now transitioning from, you know, what i defined as an insurrection for the first roughly 24 hours to a coup, where prigozhin will be fighti...

>> okay. thank you for continuing, by the way, to lay this out in bite-sized pieces that many of us can follow. what is it that prigozhin now wants? >> so my initial thought is that he's likely -- he was likely looking to replace the minister of defense, shoygu, and the chief of the general staff for incompetence and ineffectively running the war. still serving in putin's interests, basically being the good lieutenant. going after those people in putin's inner circle that have failed him. the folks that have been providing false reports. that, to me, gives precedence for, you know, lieutenants...