The Situation Room: Interview With Rep. Jason Crow (D-CO)

Interview

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I haven't received an official briefing yet, Wolf. I actually just arrived back in Colorado from my time in Washington.

But I have been tracking the Wagner Group and the work of Prigozhin for a very long time. He's been involved in Africa, in the Middle East, and of course the war in Ukraine for some time. He's been a key player in this conflict.

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Well, if anybody thinks that either Putin or Prigozhin is going to walk away from this unscathed, they're fooling themselves.

The idea that Prigozhin is going to go to Belarus and retire in peace and the Wagner mercenaries are going to return to the battlefield and Putin's going to go back to situation normal, it's not going to happen.

Putin has been extremely weakened by this. Prigozhin has been extremely weakened by this. The Russian military has taken a huge morale blow due to this issue.

And actually one, they're our greatest tools, one of the greatest assets to this Wagner military force of over 30,000 is just off the battlefield. This is an opportunity for Ukraine to actually capitalize on this and expedite the offensive.

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I don't see how that happens. I really don't. Anybody who's watched Vladimir Putin over the years, that is just not his style. He's been humiliated.

The idea that something like this could happen even two years ago actually shows, Wolf, the extent to come the Ukrainian disaster -- has miscalculation to invade Ukraine has weakened him, destroyed his military, has destroyed his intelligence operation. The idea that he was taken by surprise of a massive force of 20,000 to 30,000 getting very close to Moscow, this never would have happened two years ago.

But there's another big development, Wolf, not just militarily. But we've learned something politically here, too.

It was shocking that the last 24 hours Prigozhin had a recording where he openly admitted that he ran the Russian election interference operation in 2016 to interfere in U.S. elections.

We've known for a while that he's run that, but to have the person running that operation admit that publicly, it's pretty shocking.

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Well, I think we have a couple things we have to do. Number one, we have to make sure that weapons and equipment that are in the Russian arsenal remain safe and secure.

A big challenge because obviously we're being in Russia. Keeping eyes on the nuclear arsenal.

Number two, looking at where these mercenaries are going and the instability they could cause in other places. They're very involved in Africa and unstable, volatile regions, very involved in Syria.

Are those mercenaries moving out, are they rearranging their forces, is that going to cause more conflict in other regions? That's something we have to take a close look at.

The third is actually an opportunity for us. As we speak right now, the Biden administration dispatched high-level members of their administration to Europe to meet with countries who have kind of been on the fence.

That hadn't been willing to be critical of Russia, hadn't been willing to take sides in this conflict, to convince them to come our way and to push back against the Russian invasion.

Their job has just been made significantly easier because, frankly, they could tell folks to tune into your show and look at the disaster in Russia.

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