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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 ...

By now. w ben, thank you for being here. what can you report in terms of president zelenskyy's response to these events thus far? >> reporter: yeah, president zelenskyy has put out a message on social media in which he basically says russia's weakness is obvious, full scale weakness. the longer russia keeps its troops and mercenaries on our land, the more chaos, pain and problems it will have for itself later. certainly, what we're seeing is that this invasion that began back in february of last year, that the russian leadership thought would last for a few days has turned into an utter catast...

>> reporter: well, michael, i think that's their dream vision, but at the moment, it takes time to get the pilots trained, to get planes here, since nobody has agreed to provide ukraine with f-16s. really, now is the moment. one of the problems, of course, at the front is that the russians do seem to have the advantage when it comes to air power. but i think what the ukrainians have on their side, to their advantage, is the fact that the russians are in a state of disarray. the leadership of the kremlin is in chaos. the ministry of defense is involved in this brewing conflict with prigozhin an...

Equipment, much of it recently supplied from the west, ready to go, to push forward their offensive. now, the other day, we were down near the front in the areas where there are a small eight villages, 44 square miles, that the ukrainians had liberated so far. yesterday, we were in another area where we saw there's a huge concentration of troops and equipment, essentially ready to go. certainly, now is the time for the ukrainians, many believe, to push ahead with this counteroffensive. michael? >> ben, ben, to your latest point, it puts additional pressure on the united states, does it not, an...