BREAKING: COUP ATTEMPT IN RUSSIA?

what on Earth is going on man what is happening so I thought the work week was done uh Crystal and I are currently in Canada at the moment because we're about to go to a wedding as you can see I'm all decked out spiffy and whatnot and then news breaks last night it looks like there's a coup going on in Russia you couldn't hold off on

this for just a little longer so that I was in the studio at the time but you know I couldn't wait I had to record something for you guys I've been following this closely and uh it's wild so I'm about to hit you with like you just sit back and relax because I'm going to hit you with like 13 twists and turns here and at the

very last moment like two minutes before I started recording this we just got something that might be a game changer which is the cherry on top so let me break this down for you um I'm gonna mess this name up but bear with me I'm probably gonna mess up the pronunciation of not just every name but every place as well in Russia that we're talking about

here but Evgeni pragosan is the leader of Russia's Wagner group now this is like a paramilitary organization I'll tell I'll give you more about them in a second okay but this guy's the head of a Russian paramilitary Group which is currently fighting ukrainians in Ukraine and this guy claims that his forces were attacked by Russia's military hours after he said the Ukraine war is based on

lies he said that this that forces were attacked by the the Russian military Russia's defense Ministry denies attacking Wagner progozin said quote this is not a military coup it's a March for justice as they move towards Moscow quote this is something from uh pregosian here am I getting any I have no idea if I'm getting that name right quote evil is brought by military the evil

brought by military leadership Must Be Stopped he's saying that about Russia's military he claims his forces are Crossing into Russian territory he adds quote we'll destroy anything that gets in the way so far no confirmation of Wagner troops in Russia but this was as of last night we actually have some video coming out now which shows that they're certainly are people from this Wagner group in

Russia and they're all decked out in their military gear they have their weapons there are some attacks that have been happening again I'll get to more on that uh in a second Russia opens a criminal investigation against progozin the FSB which is the Russian version of the CIA calls on Wagner's troops to arrest him a top General appeals to Wagner quote I urge you to stop

security forces in Moscow are put on high alert State TV is airing a special News Bulletin they've been doing it all night they've been following this closely because it looks like it's literally a coup attempt or an armed rebellion and Putin is receiving Around the Clock updates so basically the gist of it here is you have this Russian paramilitary Group which has been helping them fight

in Ukraine and now it looks like they've turned on Vladimir Putin and the Russian government and it's interesting because there's like conflicting reasons that they give one thing he says is that he was attacked by Russian troops that this paramilitary group the Wagner group was attacked by Russian troops but then in other times he he has other quotes which seem to indicate he's saying now that

the war in Ukraine is totally based on lies and that's why he's he's turning on them but just to give you some more about the Wagner group here because look when I first heard that these are the people who are attempting a coup in Russia my first thought was I've heard that name before and if I'm not mistaken I think this is like a Neo-Nazi aligned

paramilitary that's fighting in Ukraine because whenever people bring up the azov Battalion which is like the Ukrainian Nazis who are a branch of the Ukrainian military um one of the counter arguments I often heard is like if when people bring that up you also have like a paramilitary arm of the Russian military that's sort of Neo-Nazi aligned so this idea that it's like Putin is just

trying to denoxify Ukraine is totally bogus because he's using you know Nazi Fighters as well well here's what the Wagner group is I'll give you the the total breakdown here so Russian paramilitary organization it is seen as a private military company a network of mercenaries or de facto private Army of Russian President Vladimir Putin at least until now the group operates beyond the law in Russia

where private military companies are officially forbidden because it operates in support of Russian interests it received equipment from the Russian Ministry of defense and uses Ministry of Defense installations for training the Wagner group is said to be a de facto unit of the ministry of Defense uh or Russia's Military Intelligence Agency the gru while the rag the Wagner group itself is not ideologically driven various elements

of Wagner have been linked to neo-nazism and far-right extremism now the other thing is a lot of people in this group are like criminals like former criminals you have these mercenaries you know these are like hardened tough guy fighters who are probably some of the best fighters on the battlefield but you know as any dictator will probably tell you any dictator from history not a good

idea to like give up your Monopoly on violence if you're the head of if you're an authoritarian head of state because then you're going to have rival factions that conform and then they can question your power and that seems to be a lot of what's going on right here so Russia's Wagner mercenary chief Evgeni pragosan said that the kremlin's rationale for invading Ukraine was based on

Lies concocted by his perennial adversary quote there's a direct quote from him there was nothing out of the ordinary happening on February 24th the defense Ministry is trying to deceive society and the president and tell us a story about how there was crazy aggression from Ukraine and that they were planning to attack us with the whole of NATO wow so I mean look based on that

quote he's actually saying he thinks Vladimir Putin was duped by others that are top military brass in the Russian military not necessarily that Putin's like the bad guy it's more the other top military brass at least that at least that's what I get from this particular quote here now an interesting thing that um popped on my timeline is it's a Washington Post article from May 14th

of this year and it said Wagoner Chief offered to give Russian troop locations to Ukraine leak says so it was Discord Discord leaks and this guy progozin was apparently like working with ukrainians to go after Russian troops which is the polar opposite of what everybody thought was going on in this instance because everybody thought the Wagner group was solidly in the camp of Vladimir Putin um

so some roads have been destroyed in the lapetsk region in Russia in an attempt to stop Wagner forces from driving to Moscow they actually have taken a number of cities and are going towards Moscow but this is like a desperate attempt to try to keep them out of Moscow there's roads that have been blown up and you know this isn't something that's just a social media

sort of parse through and piece together what's accurate information versus what's misinformation versus what's just like told total flat out lies so there's also helicopters that attacked an oil Depot in Russia's Verona's region which is insane it just goes to show you that the head of the Wagner group is he's got probably a lot of support man and ultimately in a situation like this with an

attempted coup it is a numbers game it comes down to like who has the numbers on their side and who has most other power centers behind them and so for a while here look like oh my God we might be in for a protracted Civil War in Russia or perhaps a coup that you know might go pretty quickly um but it certainly didn't look like we

were gonna de-escalate it looked like the cat was already out of the bag but again hold on because there's a cherry on top at the end of this which is a giant curveball so um multiple defense Ministry units involved in the war were beginning to move under pagosan's command entire course and shoigu who's a top Russian defense minister and and I don't know who that is

by the way but somebody who else is involved in Russia's defense um their their commanders are being removed so the ones who are loyal to Putin were being removed there was some movement in that direction um which is kind of astonishing Putin also signed a law allowing people to be detained for up to 30 days for violating martial law so martial law was declared and they

were ready to start jailing people who they were suspecting of not being a loyalist Russian soldiers surrendered in Mass to or in Moss I never know how to say that properly to um to Wagner in the verones region and they controlled rostov population 1.1 million verones population 1.1 million and they were approaching uh krasnadar which is population 1 million and Volgograd which is 950 000 without

any resistance whatsoever again it's tough to it's really tough to parse through what's you know accurate information versus what is just somebody trolling versus what's misinformation versus because you know you don't know what Twitter accounts to trust who's totally biased in One Direction or another Direction but um suffice to say there's sufficient evidence that they were moving Wagner was moving on Moscow and they were making

colossal gains and there was a whole bunch of Allegiance flipping going on um Russia's entire this one I'm not sure about this could just be alleged I'm unsure about it but Russia's entire 22nd Special Forces Brigade has switched to progos inside as well as some FSB border guards um progozin said he had taken control of the Russian military headquarters in rostov to make sure Russian airstrikes

hit ukrainians and not Wagner again this is weird because like on the one hand he's saying the Ukrainian war is based on lies and so now I'm against it uh and then on the other hand you have him saying like no I took control of these Russian military units so that we make sure we hit Ukraine as opposed to hitting our own people so it's totally

you know contradictory information here it's not perfectly clear what's going on and then of course at the same time all this is unfolding Fox News goes on air and they start wildly accusing the U.S government of orchestrating the attempted coup I mean we know very little and everything's unfolding in real time and they're already out there blaming the attempted coup on the U.S by the way

the most important Point here is like I my gut reaction was I actually hope that this guy doesn't succeed because Wagner I thought they were just fully Neo-Nazi apparently they're like nominally not but they have some elements that are but either way that's close enough to Nazism to make me go I don't know about that man that's a that's a little extreme right so I like

my initial reaction was Jesus I hope they don't succeed but then once you start reading things about like them saying the Ukrainian war was based on lies which implies like hey maybe they'll stop that then you go I don't know maybe maybe they should win but then you stop and think more and you realize we're talking about a nuclear-armed country here and basically any sort of

unrest to this severe degree is a terrifying scenario because who we don't know who the hell is going to get their hands on those nuclear weapons or what their take on nuclear weapons is or you know how willy-nilly they might act with this incredible power so ultimately when you look at it you go I don't know what the hell is a good outcome to this I

don't know who I would want to win in a power struggle like this but just having a power struggle like this with a nuclear arms with any state it's terrifying but with the nuclear arm State it's like next level terrifying it's like Jesus Christ man like this could end in a horrific horrific way so look the ball was um already rolling man we were Off to

the Races here with just how devastating the scenario was and I thought it was almost certainly fair to call it a rebellion or an attempted coup or that we were seeing the beginning of a civil war unfolding but then at the very last moment literally two minutes before I started recording this video Max sedan or cedan I don't know how to pronounce his name he's the

Moscow bureau chief for the financial times so this guy's legit he does real reporting he says Belarus says it has convinced progozin to stand down his armed uprising lukashenko spent the entire day negotiating with progozin after agreeing on joint actions with Putin and additionally clarifying the situation through his own channels no immediate confirmation from the Kremlin or pergozin pragosan says Wagner is standing its coup attempt

down and going back to Ukraine according to the plan Pro goes and said quote right now the moment has come when blood could be spilled therefore understanding all the responsibility for the fact that Russian blood will be spilled on one side we are turning our Convoy around and going back to our base excuse me our base camps according to the plan um so Belarus I believe

it's lukashenko is the president there there was some evidence that he was actually in the process of fleeing Belarus and I don't know if he was going to Turkey or elsewhere but like so the fear was this is like a widespread coup wouldn't just be Russia also potentially the leadership of Belarus but at least according to this information that we have now actually lukashenko was negotiating

uh with progos in the entire time and he somehow got him to stand down which by the way when you're this far into the scenario it's so hard to wrap your mind around the fact that he's standing down because you already had they already took over cities they already took over government buildings they already rolling the tanks down the streets there's already been some attacks of

of you know oil infrastructure Etc you look at that and it's like Putin probably wants your head dog he probably watch your head so for you to stand down it's like well what the hell kind of a deal was made and this is where you start getting into speculation but it honestly feels more like a Game of Thrones thing than a real life thing here it's

like what the hell did they offer this guy at the last minute to get his ass to stand down when they were already you know in the midst of the coup it wasn't even just the beginning 10 of it we're already you know 40 of the way there right so what the hell did they offer this guy I have no idea was it uh is it

money is it more power is it a more direct say in the government of Russia because I find it hard to believe Putin would accept almost any terms given what's already happened because now he's got egg on his face he looks like he just has totally lost control of his own military and and of Russia more generally so Putin by the way I forgot to mention

he came out and gave a speech last night in the midst of all this when it was very clear that there was a rebellion or an attempted coup happening and he basically he gave a classic you know strong man speech where he basically says this is uh these are Traders this is treasonous we need unity in the face of you know this ongoing war that we're

waging and you know you're killing your fellow Russian brothers and sisters and you know that there will be severe penalties for this and they were mobilizing as much as they could in the other direction but it was really getting to the point where we or we already crossed the point where the battle lines were drawn and it was like pick a side if you're you know

in Russia's police force or if you're in you know one branch of the army or the military or another it was like all right let's see where everybody's Allegiance lies and it certainly looked like um there wasn't as much unified support behind Putin as one may have thought so I don't know what's going to happen man look everything I'm telling you right now is uh amazing

and it's by the minute things are changing by the time this video posts we may have some new stuff where actually screw it there was no deal or I'm throwing the deal out and the war's back on right so I don't know but at least as of right now it's been a crazy crazy 24-hour period or so where it was full scale you know Russian coup

Rebellion Civil War that was that was ongoing and then through some hail Mary Miracle type it looks like maybe they averted disaster but I don't know man I certainly don't think um I wouldn't say that for sure this thing is over because there's going to be a lot of people with a lot of feelings about this and um seems like once the cat's out of the

bag it can't get it back in right once that toothpaste is out of the toothpaste I was gonna say toothpaste bottle that's not a thing Too Faced bottle is not a thing toothpaste tube was the toothpaste out of the toothpaste tube you can't get it back in right so I don't know what the hell is going to happen um I mean I guess I hope that

the piece stays because again it is a it's a terrifying Prospect with Vladimir Putin in power giving his illegal and offensive invasion of Ukraine and the fact that he's a war criminal uh so it's terrifying with him in power but perhaps the only thing that's even more terrifying is if he gets ousted in a coup by somebody who is probably to his right again I don't

know for sure if he's two is right it's it because the fact that they're aligned with neo-nazis makes me go oh you're definitely to the right of Putin but then the fact that he made some comments about how the ward in Ukraine is based on lies which implies he would end it that would make him to the left of Putin at least on that issue I

don't know man it's like do you want to get uh you know your right nut chopped off or your left nut chopped off neither but that seems to be the options here it's like there is no good ending to this but what we learned right now is it might be the least bad of all bad scenarios that's unfolding um at least as of this moment but

again it could all change very quickly because this is an evolving fluid situation so it's been wild following this but I just you know my heart is with all the innocent civilians my heart's with the innocent civilians who are in Ukraine and have been dealing with the illegal war waged against them and my heart is with the innocent civilians in Russia who are pretty much caught

in the crossfire here and um it's probably an absolutely terrifying scenario for them but I hope stability prevails and uh just for the sake of for the love of God we need to make sure that the nuke situation stays stable not that it's stable under Putin but you know it could actually be worse if if he's ousted violently and then you have a power vacuum and

a struggle to fill it I mean it kind of reminds me of what happened in Libya right everybody agrees that Gaddafi is a monster and a crazy person but it's like when he was ousted it was actually worse after that right we saw it firsthand with the slave markets operating in Libya openly or with Saddam Hussein he's an absolute vicious dictator and a monster but when

the U.S ousted him after that it got a hell of a lot worse you had the rise of Isis for example so it is it's a colossal disaster to say the least but let's hope there's some sort of a positive ending whatever that may be