♪♪ >>> We're following several new developments this morning out of Russia. President Vladimir Putin just moments ago addressing law enforcement involved in this weekend's armed rebellion by the Wagner mercenary group telling the troops that they, quote, stopped a civil war. Russia also announced it is dropping charges against the Wagner group and its leader yevgeniy prigozhin and the mercenaries are preparing to hand over heavy military equipment to Russian troops. Joining us now is bill brouder, once the largest foreign investor in Russia and now one of the Kremlin and president Putin's significant enemies. He singled him out in 2018. He is also the author of "Freezing order" true story of money laundering murder and surviving Vladimir Putin's wrath. Bill, thank you so much for joining us. I think I actually want to start there because throughout the course of this weekend and in the days since, I have constantly wondered when is the crack down happening. There's no way that yevgeniy prigozhin can be allowed to just go to Belarus or go to Africa or wherever he might want to go. That seems like an inevitability. Is it? >> Yeah. Basically Putin can't stand -- he can't tolerate being disrespected. This is -- the psychology of Russian leadership is like the psychology of a prison yard. In order for Putin to have been the leader for 23 years, he's had to be the -- seem to be the meanest guy in the prison yard the one that would cause damage to anybody who even looked at him the wrong way. And yevgeniy prigozhin didn't just look at him the wrong way, he disrespected him in the most massive, humiliating way. It's not just a question of what happens to prigozhin but what happens to all the other people who either didn't immediately declare loyalty to Putin during that day or who kept quiet or who perhaps were even working on the other side. In my opinion, the only way that Putin can stay in power is for him to reassert his authority and the only way he can do that is to become extremely aggressive, dangerous and violent towards all sorts of people who he doesn't believe are loyal to him. I think there's going to be a huge sort of purge, crackdown, whatever you want to call it, of the elite, of the government, of the military and of the oligarchs for Putin to reestablish his authority. >> We saw prigozhin but we haven't seen any of the inner circle or close advisers to president Putin side with prigozhin or speak out of turn at some point. Why would this be a threat to his power if no one else is standing up right now. >> Well, because the only reason that Putin has been able to stay in power is that everyone is scared of him. And what this showed is that you can basically -- a group of I think it was 8,000 men could drive along the highway and take over rostov, a major military base and drive to the next town and nobody said anything. The people took selfies with them and hugged them. And so if Putin can't exert his power by just existing, then all of a sudden other people will say, look, this is a very profitable job to have to be the president of Russia. You can get hundreds of billions of dollars if you do this job. There's a huge incentive for anybody to have a go at him. It looks like he's weak, they will have a go. That is the -- it's the psychology of a prison yard there where, you know, unless he can become -- he can be seen again as the scariest, most brutal guy, his days are numbered. >> I was struck yesterday former ambassador John Bolton told my colleague poppy, don't underestimate the possibility that Putin could turn this to his advantage. Do you think that's overstating his 23 years of ability to do such things given what we saw over the course of the last four days? >> Well, what I know about Putin is that he is slow to react to things. Stuff happens and then, you know, a day, a week, a month might go by, but I guarantee you that Putin is now sitting there saying, okay, how do we get control over the situation? He can use the situation to organize and justify a massive crackdown. And it wouldn't be unusual. We saw the same thing with erdogan in Turkey, coup attempt made against him. He arrested everybody in sight. Literally 50,000 people went to jail in Turkey. People he didn't trust. And I'm almost certain that Putin will do that. If he does do that, if he takes this coup as his -- as a sort of impetus to even crack down further, then he may very well end up more control over the Russian situation than he had before. It could also go the other way. That's why we're in this period of really dramatic uncertainty.
