Video appears to show Wagner leader Prigozhin greeting fighters in Belarus

 

New today is Yevgeny Prigozhin

The man who waged an armed rebellion

against Vladimir Putin

has reportedly

been spotted in public for the first time

since that uprising.

This is the grainy video posted on Wagner

social media channels

that appears to show the mercenary

leader greeting his troops in Belarus.

Now the video appears unedited,

but it was filmed in very low light.

As you can see,

CNN can't definitively confirm

the speaker in the video

is, in fact, Prigozhin

or even when the video was recorded.

CNN chief international security

correspondent Nick

Paton Walsh has been following

this new development.

So, Nick,

what more can you tell us

first about the video

and about Yevgeny Prigozhin's whereabouts

Yeah, it is extraordinary of this video.

It doesn't really give us particularly

compelling evidence

that Prigozhin is in the dark

grainy footage that appears to be

possibly from the camp in Belarus

that as they claim

they post

this video,

is where volcanic fighters

may have relocated to.

Essentially, this comes forward

and says the implication

after his long absence

is essentially keeping with the deal

provided by Belarus's

president, Alexander Lukashenko,

that turned his column

around on the way to Moscow

during that failed armed rebellion.

And interestingly,

two emerged

a matter of maybe 3 hours after.

Here in Prague,

the head of Britain's foreign

intelligence agency, MI6,

said that in their assessment,

Yevgeny goes in.

I asked him, is he alive? Is he healthy?

And he said that Prigozhin

was, quote, floating about.

And then suddenly this video emerges.

So clearly a lot of a big hit show.

Prigozhin is going along

with that deal, Boris.

And Nick,

you were able to ask the head of MI6

about the deal

that Prigozhin struck

with Vladimir Putin.

What did he share with you?

Yeah, it was an interesting

assessment, really,

in that often

when we hear the Kremlin speak publicly,

most seasoned observers

imagine that there's a different story

behind closed doors.

But the Richard Mole,

the head of MI6, in a rare

public speech here, said, look,

from what

we've assessed

with the Western intelligence assets

that we have available to us,

actually that public narrative

of Prigozhin

marching on Moscow, Lukashenko

from Belarus

intervening, and Putin

suddenly seems forgiving

Putin in very short order

over the days ahead.

Well, that's actually

what really happened.

There isn't a hidden private story

that's more complex.

That was interesting.

He said that essentially Putin

cut that deal with Prigozhin to, quote,

save his own skin.

But he also used some

kind of colorful metaphors

to describe

quite how Putin has flip

flopped over Prigozhin.

Here's what he said.

He really didn't fight back

against Prigozhin.

He cut a deal to save his skin

using the good offices

of the of the leader of Belarus.

So

even I can't see inside

Putin's head, but

the only person who has been well,

the only people

who have been talking about escalation

and nuclear weapons are Putin

and a handful of henchmen around him

Now, he said that while at breakfast,

essentially, he'd

call Prigozhin a traitor by supper.

He'd been pardoned by a few days later.

He'd been invited into the Kremlin

for that extraordinary flip flopping

we've seen from Putin, a sign of weakness

and something that

patently was compounded

by this head of mistakes

and a rare public assessment

of really

what Western intelligence

knowing about that extraordinary

weekend in Russia, Boris.

And it shows just how the Kremlin needs

Prigozhin and needs Wagner

forces in Ukraine,

how little progress

they've made aside from Wagner.

Nick Paton Walsh,

thank you so much for

the reporting Brianna.

English