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Wagner Leader Prigozhin Issues Audio Statement After Mutiny; U.S. Diplomats Were Busy Sending Messages To Russian Officials Over The Weekend. Aired 11-11:30a ET

Aired June 26, 2023 - 11:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[11:00:00]

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: The fallout from the revolt in Russia after charging into Russia with its band of mercenaries, the leader of the Wagner group hasn't been seen in day. Where is Wagner boss, Yevgeny Prigozhin? And what will happen to him if he's found?

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: Very soon we will hear from President Biden, his first public remarks since the failed insurrection in Russia. CNN is live life at the White House ahead of this.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: And we are getting new updates from the battlefields in Ukraine. How does this revolt change the situation there? This is CNN News Central.

SIDNER: This morning Russian President Vladimir Putin appearing in a video address for the first time since a revolt and test of his authority. We do not know when or where the video was shot and Putin made no mention of the rebellion. And the fate of the man who launched the insurrection remains up in the air. The Kremlin claims a deal has been reached to drop criminal charges against Yevgeny Prigozhin. It requires him though to leave the country and go live in Belarus.

But Prigozhin has not confirmed the deal. And it has not been seen since Saturday night. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken warning quote, we haven't seen the last act, signaling the political threat may not be over. CNN's Nic Robertson joins us now from London this morning. Nic, what is the latest on this remarkable moment in Russia's history.

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC EDITOR: The Kremlin seems to be trying to sort of step aside from it and move forward. The fact that Putin has shown on T.V. but we don't really have context about it indicates that they're trying to say, look, nothing to see here. We're moving forward. The fact that the Prime Minister does come out and speak about the challenge to internal security don't show us that Putin doesn't want to be associated with that message.

This huge mess was on his watch. We don't know as you say where he is, we don't know where his Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu is at the moment, although he was also seen on camera today at location supposedly at a Western -- Russian Western military base, but again, without speaking, and we really don't know when it was shot either. What does that tell us right now, the Kremlin wants to move forward. But Prigozhin is the one that perhaps could offer the alternate narrative on all of this.

And he of course, is the one who has completely disappeared, no sight nor sound extensively on his way to Belarus. The fact that he hasn't arrived there or appeared anywhere on camera, given his propensity to take him to social media to tell everyone whose views about any given situation that this stage now has to be something of a surprise.

SIDNER: There have been so many times when people have disappeared, been poisoned, fallen out of windows. I am sure he has taken precautions. Nic Robertson, thank you so much for your reporting throughout the weekend and today. Kate?

BOLDUAN: And leaders from around the world, Sara, are watching what happened in Russia this weekend. And they along with the rest of us, quite frankly, must have to wonder what is going to happen next. China is sending one clear message. Among it all reaffirming support for Vladimir Putin. CNN's David Culver is following this for us. He joins us now. David, as we remember, you remember as you reported on it so often, China and Russia have pledged this No Limits partnership. How does this weekend impact that do you think?

DAVID CULVER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It makes it incredibly awkward, Kate, when you tell the entire neighborhood that the person living right next door to you is somebody you trust, you call them your best, most intimate friends. That is how President Xi has described President Putin. And then an incredible commotion happens inside that person's house. Well, what played out over the weekend is very telling.

We saw one of the deputy foreign ministers from Russia, go to Beijing meet with the foreign minister there Qin Gang, essentially trying to stabilize everything. But this is no doubt incredibly concerning internally for Chinese leadership, especially given they share 2,600 miles of border and they have publicly and really adamantly backed Russia throughout its invasion of Ukraine providing not only diplomatic support, but also much needed economic support.

So to see this playing out just north of China is no doubt concerning. Publicly, though, they're saying look, this is an internal affair for Russia. This is really as China likes to say no one else's business. They often say that when it comes to their own human rights allegations of abuses any issues with Taiwan. They say essentially to the rest of the world. Keep out. But Beijing is going to be following this very closely as it has a direct impact for them.

[11:05:00]

BOLDUAN: And as we all know, China has very tight controls on what is seen, heard and reported on to the people in China. How have you -- what have you been hearing about how this rebellions even being reported on?

CULVER: Yes, take control even over our broadcast over the air where oftentimes it'll go to color bars or just black if they don't want what we're putting out there to be seen across China. What was really interesting playing out over the weekend, of course, as CNN and much of the Western media across the world, was showing what was happening with Wagner group and Prigozhin's troops in the convoy occupying parts of Russia.

If you were looking at Chinese state media, you didn't see that. In fact, in some cases, you saw a reporter in Moscow standing in a peaceful, quiet garden showing just tranquil weekend traffic going around the Kremlin. You certainly didn't see any of the major commotion that we were showing. And that's indicative of them wanting to portray a stable Russia that their neighbor has this under control. Yet on Chinese social media, which as you point out, is tightly controlled, heavily censored at times, too. There were discussions of this, but they didn't go beyond questioning the relationship between China and Russia.

BOLDUAN: So interesting. Good to see you, David. Thank you for that. John?

BERMAN: All right, Kate. We do have some breaking news, an audio statement released from Wagner Chief Yevgeny Prigozhin, not sure where he was when he released this, who has checked the validity. But in this statement, he says, that two factors played into his decision to turn around the march to Moscow. He said he wanted to avoid Russian bloodshed. He also said the march was a demonstration of protests, not intended to overthrow the power in Moscow.

He also said the aim of the march was to avoid the destruction of the Wagner group. So with me now, CNN military analyst retired Lieutenant General Mark Hertling and CNN national security analyst and former CIA chief of Russia operations, Steve Hall. Steve, what do you make of what was said in the statement, and also the fact it's audio only. We haven't seen a picture of Yevgeny Prigozhin.

STEVE HALL, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Sort of like we haven't seen a reliable picture of Putin recently. I mean, the government put it up, but we didn't know when it was done, so kind of a similar situation. My first question was what you alluded to, which is be fascinating to know where this came from. The comments to me is, we've looked at it very carefully -- very briefly, rather. It seems to me like this is part of the deal.

So it's like, OK, whatever deal has been cut between Prigozhin and in the Wagner group and the Kremlin. However, that worked out whatever under the table backroom deal that was, it sounds to me like this is part of it. In other words, he's saying, hey, I wasn't going after Putin. I wasn't trying to overthrow the government. I did have some legitimate gripes. This is some part of an agreement that's, I think, supposed to validate this, probably with the Russian domestic audience.

BERMAN: And again, one of the keys here is we still haven't seen him and we don't know where he is physically, at least not yet. General, on a different subject to you, one of the fascinating questions I think that's out there is, if you're a Russian soldier, in a trench, you know, in the Donbass region, what are you thinking right now?

LT. GEN. MARK HERTLING (RET.), CNN MILITARY ANALYST: John, I always try and give you new things as I come on with you. And the one I'm going to give you this morning is that the greatest distance on the battlefield is the six inches between the ears of the commanders. In this case, what you just reported from Prigozhin, we don't know what's in his head right now. But it is going to echo within the line of troops.

You know, what you're talking about is creating trust, trust between the leaders in the government and the soldiers, trust between the soldiers in one another, their cohesion and their camaraderie that exist on the battlefield. Those things have been affected, if not been destroyed. You can't step aside and move forward like Nic said, Mr. Putin is trying to do because what we're seeing is that is a disease that's inculcated into Russian leadership.

Prigozhin is just a symptom of that disease, which really centers around dysfunction, distrust, personalities, greed, corruption, power, ego, all of those things. It is in my view, as a military commander is going to affect the soldiers on the front line. A lot of people are saying it's not, I contend that it will, especially if you start integrating those Prigozhin Wagner troops into the normal units of the Russian army.

BERMAN: Well, you bid on those front lines general so we'll take your word for that. General standby, Steve Hall standby for one moment, I want to go to Nick Paton Walsh, who is getting new information about this audio recording from the Yevgeny Prigozhin. Nick, what can you tell us about it?

NICK PATON WALSH, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL SECURITY EDITOR: Yes, more details from this 11-minute sprawling justification of the past days to point out we don't know exactly when it was recorded, or where indeed it was recorded. He does confirm though. What's photo was the helping hand of Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko, that was the explanation of how this was all resolved offered by the Kremlin and by Belarusian officials.

[11:10:08]

He says two factors played into his decision to turn around. The first factor, they wanted to avoid Russian bloodshed. And the second is they marched in a demonstration of protest not to overturn the power in the country. Now he's essentially I think, referring to how on Saturday morning, things seem to escalate exceptionally quickly while his initial March was essentially designed as a protest against the conduct of the Russian top brass during the war.

It then seemed to spiral into a direct challenge to Putin, who he said to be mistaken in terms of considering his behavior to be an insurrection, terrorist action and blackmail, so a bid perhaps to slow this down possibly. He goes on to say, though, that he understands in Belarus, Wagner could continue potentially to be a legal concern. That's interesting, because it essentially suggests he doesn't consider Wagner to be done.

And that was what we thought part of the deal outlined by the Kremlin involved that fighters who hadn't been on this, what Prigozhin referred to as the march of justice, would essentially, part of the Russian MOD if they wanted. But at the same time, those who had been on it would get some sort of immunity. It didn't seem the Kremlin felt from their statement that Wagner would carry on to exist.

It's important to point out there he also says out overnight, they walked 780 kilometers, 200 or so left to Moscow, essentially pointing out how undefended Russia had been, and how easy their progress also was. He also says and this is sort of about the justification of what we've seen as this armed rebellion, quote, The purpose of the march was to prevent the destruction of PMC Wagner and to bring to justice those who through their unprofessional actions by that he refers to the Russian Ministry of Defense, I think, made a huge number of mistakes during the special military operation.

Now, it's important now I think to see him emerging after a long pause after last being seen in the dark in Rostov as he's leaving in a baseball camp in an SUV, a period of silence. We don't exactly know where he is now. And now he emerges, I think going along with the Kremlin's narrative to say, hey, listen, we weren't trying to challenge Putin. We're looking for a future existence of the Wagner PMC. In this message too, he's very keen to point out how focused, how motivated, how effective Wagner fighters are, whether that is a bid to maintain perhaps their perspective in the eyes of the Russian people after a tumultuous weekend whether he's reminding the Russian military how effective they could be militarily, we'll yet to find out.

But it's a long message. And it's one I think that is of Yevgeny Prigozhin trying to suggest there's a way forward for him in the Russian establishment, despite this overt challenge, whatever he wants to say about it now that he clearly made to Vladimir Putin in power, a startling message, but one that does appear to backup the Kremlin narrative that we've been hearing over the past 48 hours. John?

BERMAN: All right, Nick Payton Walsh, thank you so much for that. Steve, Nick suggests maybe proposed and trying to say there is a way forward for him. Ian Bremmer, our, you know, our friend suggested earlier that Prigozhin is dead man walking. Jill Dougherty raised the question is, you know, will he remain alive? What's your view on that? And also, just broadly speaking, how is life different for Vladimir Putin today than it was one week ago?

HALL: Well, to start with that question, John, I mean he has to know that he's significantly weakened. And when I say weakened, it's certainly true vis-a-vis, you know, the West, but that's been sort of a weakening thing over the past, you know, a couple of, you know, well, 18 months. But I think that he must sense that he's weaker vis- a-vis, the most important and the most dangerous people to him. And those are his close advisers, who I think are saying, so let me see if I get this straight. We were going to go into Ukraine. It was all going to be over in a couple of days.

And now we have what really amounts to a coup attempt. What's next with this guy, with Putin? This he wouldn't be the first, you know, Russian leader who was removed in a coup, I mean, in a coup. I mean, Gorbachev suffered the same fate. So that's entirely possible. Prigozhin, you know, I think he's very suspicious that we don't see him. We don't really actually know where he is. We don't know when this was done. We don't even know if he's still alive or and if so how long it'll be? BERMAN: General, what about these Wagner troops, these thousands of people who we thought were loyal to Prigozhin and who were having some of the greatest success insofar as the Russians were having any success on the battlefield inside Ukraine? What happens to them?

HERTLING: Yes, I wouldn't say they weren't having any anywhere near great success, John, but they were having success. They were performing much better than the normal Russian military units were. But, you know, I'd put them into the category of disrupter and not in a good way. You know, the business community uses that term to say new things are happening.

This was an organization that was outside the chain of command in a military operation that needed cohesion, and it never happened. You know I'll be honest with you. I hate to make this comparison but when I was in Iraq in 2008 we had the same kind of disruption with Erik Prince's Blackwater group. That was a relatively small group. And truthfully, they were a pain in the neck.

[11:15:15]

And they created challenges to normal military operations. But they were seen as potentially the saviors of local security, they were not. This is a wide scale 15 to 30,000 soldiers with tanks and MRAPs and the capability to form a clan that will fight not only the Ukrainians, but as we saw over the weekend, they will kill Russians too. I don't know how Prigozhin recovers and his group recovers from literally downing Russian aircraft killing Russian pilots, attacking Russian soldiers on the ground, and being the so called elite of the Russian military.

It just doesn't happen. You can integrate them later on. And we're going to see I think more and more of these PMCs, these professional military companies enter into the Russian mindset. And it's on -- in my view, it's only going to cause more and more problems.

BERMAN: All right, General Mark Hertling, Steve Hall, again, what we have so far this morning is an audio recording from Yevgeny Prigozhin, not on video, what we have from Vladimir Putin is a video where he doesn't talk about the revolt. We don't even know if were shot since. So a lot of open questions remain. Our thanks to both of you. Sara?

SIDNER: Coming up, President Biden is scheduled to speak within the hour so far, the White House has been very careful with its words. Just minutes ago, we got a new response, much More on that coming up next.

And a Supreme Court decision that could shift the balance of power in Congress. Next, why the High Court has paved the way to add another majority black district in Louisiana's congressional map?

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[11:21:32]

BOLDUAN: Now following these new comments just in coming from the Wagner boss, Yevgeny Prigozhin, saying that he turned his men to round to quote, avoid Russian bloodshed. We are now -- we're also waiting to hear from President Biden and even more interested to see if and what he does say publicly about this. He is about to hold his first public event since the insurrection in Russia, just as Russia is also saying that it is now investigating whether Western intelligence was involved in the revolt. CNN's Arlette Saenz is at the White House where she joins us now. And Arlette you have some new reporting on this very thing. What are you picking up?

ARLETTE SAENZ, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Kate. The White House is trying to make clear there was zero involvement on the behalf of the United States in this rebellion in Russia. Moments ago, a spokesperson for the National Security Council Adam Hodge told me, quote, the United States was not involved and will not get involved in this situation. This was an internal Russian matter, he added.

Now this speaks to the very quiet and cautious strategy that we have seen from the White House over the past few days. They have not wanted to provide any fodder or offer Putin any opening to try to use any of the White House's or the United States words to try to suggest that they're -- they were involved in this rebellion. And that is something a message that was also relayed in phone calls, President Biden made two key allies over the weekend.

He convened calls with the leaders of the U.K., Germany, France and also a separate call with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. And additionally, he also spoke with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. One thing in that call with those European allies that was stressed was trying to just let the situation in Russia play out try not to tip the scales in any way.

And additionally, what the President was trying to do in these calls was made clear that the U.S. continues to stand behind Ukraine and will continue to offer support to the country as Russia continues to wage this war. One of the big questions has been how this rebellion in Russia not only impacts Putin's power in Russia, but also what it could mean the broader impact for the war in Ukraine.

Now, so far we haven't heard directly from President Biden. He will be speaking at an event a bit later today on a different topic about high speed internet, but we will see whether he feels any questions from reporters on the matter, as officials here are still working to determine the broader impact of what this rebellion will mean.

BOLDUAN: Yes, absolutely. Good to see you, Arlette. Thanks for jumping on and bring us that. Sara?

SIDNER: The U.S. intelligence community had been tracking for days that Wagner founder, Yevgeny Prigozhin, had been planning a major challenge to Russia's military leadership. Natasha Bertrand joins us now from the Pentagon. If they had a sense that this could be happening, were U.S. official surprised about how it played out in the fact that Russia did not fight back in a major way as he marched toward the Capitol?

NATASHA BERTRAND, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY REPORTER: That's right Sara. So U.S. intelligence officials did pick up signals in the days leading up to this rebellion that Prigozhin was potentially planning something dramatic against Russia's military leaders, including signs that he was actually surmising ammunition as well as equipment to potentially bring his forces into Russia.

But what they were actually surprised about is just how easy he was able to kind of march into Russia with his forces, take over a military headquarters in southern Russia and then continue on marching on up towards Moscow while all while facing very little resistance from Russian troops. This is something that U.S. officials did not anticipate. They actually thought that they would be facing a lot more pushback from Russian troops and that this would actually be a lot bloodier and more violent, especially as they got closer to Moscow.

[11:25:16]

So that is something that really took U.S. officials by surprise is why Russian troops did not do more to fight back here. Another aspect of this that surprised them, the role that Belarus played, how Lukashenko was able to come to an agreement with Prigozhin that essentially made the Wagner troops turn around and go back. U.S. official did not anticipate that Belarus, which is essentially kind of a vassal state of Russia wouldn't be able to broker an agreement like this.

So those are the -- were really things that took U.S. officials off guard here. But in terms of where this goes from here, in terms of how it's going to impact Putin's leadership, and of course, questions about how he is going to respond. That remains unclear and it's something U.S. officials are watching for. But we did get a statement from NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg earlier today saying that this really demonstrates the fragility of Putin's hold on power. Here's what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JENS STOLTENBERG, NATO SECRETARY GENERAL: See the weakness of the Russian regime and it also demonstrates how difficult and dangerous it is for President Putin to be reliant on mercenaries that has actually turned against him. And it also demonstrates that it is hard to predict exactly what will now happened in the next days and weeks. But we should not make the mistakes that we are under estimating the Russians.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERTRAND: Now, we also do have new reporting from my colleague, Kylie Atwood, which is that U.S. officials were busy sending messages to Russian official officials over the weekend ensuring them and sharing to them that the U.S. and the West was not involved in this rebellion by Prigozhin, and also asking them to please make sure that the nuclear arsenal inside Russia was safe and not to resort to the use of any nuclear weapons. Sara?

SIDNER: Yes, those are really important points. In this case, Putin blinked and now Prigozhin is the one on the back foot. And we'll hear more about what he has said in his very latest audio release as well as hear it from President Biden in just a few minutes. Natasha Bertrand, thank you so much for your reporting. John?

BERMAN: Yes, Sara Sidner very true. The breaking news, this audio recording from the Russian revolt leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin, why audio only, why don't we see pictures of him? Where is he? Just one of the mysteries this morning. That is we wait to hear from President Biden for the first time since this revolt.

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