Video: On MSNBC, Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA11) Discusses the Russia Situation, Says “This is a REAL serious threat to the continuation of Putin’s regime”

A few minutes ago, Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA11) – “a senior member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and previously spent 10 years as a staff member on the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee,” also “President of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization Parliamentary Assembly” – appeared on MSNBC to discuss the dramatic, chaotic, dangerous situation unfolding in Russia. For video and highlights of Rep. Connolly’s remarks, see below.

• “Prigozhin has gone further; he is now 400-500 km from Moscow, and seems to be intent on taking out senior leadership in the Russian military and the defense department and the intelligence community. This is a REAL serious threat to the continuation of Putin’s regime.”
• “Whenever you have any kind of revolution or revolution-like activity like this, you worry about what comes next. We have to remember that there are no good guys in this battle. Prigozhin is a THUG, he’s a murderous thug. When people desert the Wagner Group, when he captures them, he kills them with a *sledgehammer* to make an example out of them. He is a brutal, murderous thug. But he’s of course taking on now an equally brutish, murderous, sociopathic thug in the form of Vladimir Putin. So there’s no good guy in this struggle, and therefore there’s unlikely to be any kind of outcome that the West is going to find favorable or that is likely to put Russia back on a more democratic course. What it could do, however, is really unravel the stability of Russian military alignments over a 900 km border with Ukraine. And so this could prove to be very favorable to the Ukrainian cause, but it could prove to be profoundly destablizing internally in Russia.”
• “I think that’s the big question as we see this unfold – how loyal are the rank and file in the Russian military going to be to Vladimir Putin and to the Russian cause in Ukraine. The fact that Prigozhin was able, without firing a shot apparently, to take over the entire military command in Rostov-on-Don, which is the central command-and-control centerpiece for Russian activity in Ukraine, is a very alarming development  from Vladimir Putin’s point of view – or should be. And it does raise questions about the loyalty of Russian troops as Prigozhin continues his march, apparently to Moscow. Will they stay loyal to the state or will they step aside or will they in fact defect to Prigozhin? I think that’s why we see Putin in his public statements and his speech  a few hours ago actually show real concern and talk about the possibility of a civil war.”

This is the biggest existential threat Vladimir Putin has faced in his 23 years in power, and it could very well be the unraveling of his regime.

Watch my full conversation on @weekendcapehart: pic.twitter.com/wZD5W0Wbq6

— Rep. Gerry Connolly (@GerryConnolly) June 24, 2023