‘Putin’s Future Is On The Line!’ You Know Russia Chaos Getting Real When Wolf Blitzer Is Up Early On Saturday

CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer was up early on Saturday to anchor coverage of the chaos in Russia, where, Blitzer said, Vladimir Putin’s “future is on the line!”

On Friday into Saturday morning, chaos erupted in Russia as the Wagner paramilitary group headed by Yevgeny Prigozhin began to stage what is being called an armed insurrection at this point, claiming control of two Russian cities and calling into question Putin’s control of regular Russian military forces.

Blitzer was on hand Saturday morning to anchor wall-to-wall coverage of the unfolding situation, and noted just how deep things are getting for Putin as he quizzed CNN analyst David Sanger on the events:

WOLF BLITZER: Yeah, very, very significant indeed. The U.S. watching all of this very, very closely. Priscila Alvarez at the White House, we’ll stay in close touch with you as well. Joining us now, CNN political and national security analyst David Sanger. David, thanks for joining us. Putin’s future is on the line, presumably, right now! Prigozhin has seen what happens to people who cross Putin in the past, he wouldn’t do this, presumably, if he didn’t think he has enough support to win either in the FSB or in the Defense ministry, the FSB, the Russian intelligence agency. Do you think we know that the cards that Prigozhin is actually holding? He has to be very careful right now, given the fact that he has directly challenged Putin.

DAVID SANGER: He does. And I think what’s really truly remarkable about this moment, Wolf, probably three remarkable things. First, until now, we had suspected that there would be cracks at some point because of the war in Putin’s regime. We haven’t really seen any other than this tug of war that had gone on between Prigozhin and the Defense ministry. And Putin allowed that to happen until last night or this morning when he gave his, this morning Moscow time, when he gave his speech. And there, while he never mentioned Prigozhin’s name directly, he clearly referred to him as a traitor and made it clear he was going to crush this movement. So somehow a man who has grown up with Putin, you know, in Saint Petersburg was known as Putin’s chef, was considered a loyalist. Putin has now turned on thinking that he can no longer afford this.

I think the second important thing out of this is that no matter how this turns out, the Russian people have heard Prigozhin make the case that the war was started on sort of fraudulent circumstances.

And the third thing is, among the things we don’t know is whether Prigozhin has any influence over those additional Russian units that have control over missiles, including, we believe, some tactical nuclear weapons. So that’s really what the White House is focused on, nuclear control.

Watch above via CNN.

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