Wagner Group will halt move toward Moscow to avoid bloodshed, leader says

the world is on edge this hour watching and wondering as a huge moment is playing out in Russia the Wagner group has allegedly called a halt to its march to Moscow the army of mercenaries was reported to be 200 kilometers from the Russian Capital when its leader yevgeny pagosian said he'd ordered his troops back to their field camps in Ukraine to avoid spilling Russian blood um these are pictures of a smashed roadblock on the main Highway North to the Capitol the barrier of trucks broke through by this Wagner column of military equipment whose Advance had been unchecked Ukrainian President Vladimir zielinski has reacted to the developments in Russia zielinski took to social media today saying that quote Russia's weakness is obvious the President also says the longer Moscow keeps its troops and mercenaries in Ukraine the more pain and problems it would create for Russia solenski says Putin's use of propaganda is faltering and that quote there is now so much chaos that no lie can hide it for more on this we've reached oral Brown he's a professor of international relations and political science at the University of Toronto he's also an associate at the Davis Center at Harvard University oral thank you so much for joining us today thank you so I want to start with some of these unconfirmed reports that we have that the belarussian president Alexander lukashenko said to have negotiated an agreement to stop the march of these Wagner soldiers towards Moscow what do you make of that it seems that this Rebellion which in many ways was a surprise but it shouldn't have been entirely because the theater ships often tend to disintegrate the in unpredictable ways they are looking good and strong for many many years then all of a sudden we see weaknesses that we should have noticed before but now we also have this kind of irony where lukashenka who is this extremely repressive thuggish leader of Belarus who has increasingly become controlled by Vladimir Putin now supposedly negotiated an agreement with the Evgeni pregozian who has been a creature created in a way by Vladimir Putin in your view here oral why do you think Belarus is President why would he be negotiating with fogner why would that not be Vladimir Putin well Vladimir Putin we have to understand this not in terms of the standard analysis of looking at class so it's looking at Machiavelli looking at uh standard social science theories of decision making but probably we are better off trying to get our Clues from The Sopranos or from The Godfather looking at the Putin regime as an organized crime syndicate and there the head of their Syndicate must look strong and must look invincible so it would be Unbecoming for Vladimir Putin who has said that this is a betrayal a snap in the back it is treason that would now negotiate he needs to be seen to be crushing this rebellion and if he cannot do that then someone else who step has to step in and try to mediate something which could create some kind of face saving measure now we're in the early days and ultimately we cannot predict exactly what will happen but if Latin recruiting is not able to reinforce the image which she has used to deter any kind of challenge before then this is a weakness that will be exploited one way or another by various factions within Russia that have feared him in the past talk to us a little bit more oral about that potential weakness that is maybe being exposed here or how are you thinking about the current state of Putin's regime in Russia we are looking at a regime that is in power for 23 years uh leaving a country that is the largest territory in the world unparalleled natural resources and yet outside of the uh wealthy oligarchs it is a country that is racially poor on a per capita basis the GDP of Russia is less than that of turkey or Romania and so all these results have been wasted the corruption that has been so pervasive has obviously also penetrated the military and the security services which have proven to be ineffective the expected Victory Parade that Vladimir Putin was going to have in Kiev did not materialize not precaution came out and said this is a war and it is an unjustified War and the conduct of the war is inexcusable this is disruptive challenge but it exposes the failure in the corruption of the Russian regime oral we've heard from Vladimir Putin saying that the West should not be using this as some sort of opportunity to harm Russia we've seen similar statements today from the Russian foreign Ministry how do you think NATO and some of those Allied countries how do you think they should be responding to what we've been seeing play out yeah constantly attacked NATO as constantly attacked what he calls the collective West as a way of diverting attention away from the fundamental failures of his regime you know when we look at the defeated powers in the second world war 30 years later they were prosperous successful democracies 30 years after the throttle communism Russia is basically an economic failure and so he needed to divert that attention away and it is not working any longer NATO is not allowing Russia to dictate the terms and we can see this that two neutral states that have been so accommodating to Russia Finland and Sweden decided to join NATO because of the Russian aggression and Finland was already a member of NATO and Sweden is about to become a member of NATO so consequently the alliance needs to look at its own policies how to support democracy how to deter aggression and uh I must say that we have not been particularly bold at times we have been too timid confusing cautioned with timidity and caution is always wise because Russia is in nuclear power but this is not a time for uh the alliance to stop supporting in fact from increasing support for Ukraine how do you think the people of Russia are thinking about this right now ordinary Russian citizens much of the news that they have been getting in a very controlled media environment was from television which 95 plus has basically been giving the Kremlin line but now even though social media has been blocked in many ways when you have the mayor of Moscow saying that people uh in the city should not be going to work on Monday because this is a special situation then I think more and more massive failure this war of aggression against Ukraine has been and just finally here oral what are you going to be watching for not just in the days ahead but of course this has been changing so rapidly what are you going to be watching for on the hours ahead we have to see if there will be cracks in the support system for the putinite regime that is will the military begin to fray we know that the Wagner group took over uh rust upon the dawn which is the regional headquarters of the military without a fight the military was passive that is not the expectation that Vladimir Putin had so we have to see how the military will react with the security services Wiki will continue to support all out Vladimir Putin and whether the National Guard which is basically designed to protect the person regime will continue to do that oral great to speak with you today thank you so much thank you for having me on oral Brown for us stay with us we have more coverage for you straight ahead

Channel: CBC News

Views: 44,791

Keywords: russia, wagner, mercenary group, war efforts, vladimir putin, world news, canada, cbc, cbc news

Id: FU4Sp-xbQqI

Length: 8min 54sec (534 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 24 2023