Image source, Reuters

The US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has been speaking about the situation in Russia to the BBC's US news partner, CBS.

It's the first major reaction from a senior US official to the Wagner mercenary rebellion.

Here are some key quotes from his interview on Meet the Press, external with presenter Chuck Todd.

What should we believe, with what we just witnessed in the last 48 hours in Russia?

"We've seen more cracks emerge in the Russian façade. It is too soon to tell exactly where they go... but certainly, we have all sorts of new questions that Putin is going to have to address in the weeks and months ahead."

Do you believe [the Wagner Group] is being dismantled?

"We'll see if this means that Wagner forces are coming out of Ukraine.

"The very fact that over the weekend, Wagner forces were coming out of Ukraine and going into Russia and toward Moscow, in and of itself is, is extraordinary.... this is just the latest chapter in a book of failure that Putin has written for himself and for Russia."

The leader of Belarus apparently mediated [the deal]. Are we underestimating Belarus here?

"It may be that Putin didn't want to debase himself to the level of negotiating directly with Prigozhin. So it was useful to get someone like Lukashenko [the leader of Belarus] into this on his behalf. But again, that is speculation. We want to avoid that."

Mayeni Jones
BBC correspondent in Kyiv

Ukrainians, like millions of people around the world, followed this weekend’s developments in Russia closely. People were glued to their TVs, and there was social media commentary on the unfolding situation late into the night.

But as Kyiv’s residents woke up on Sunday morning, the mood was subdued as they pondered what to make of this frankly bizarre weekend.

Valeriy Konstiantinov says he expected more of Wagner: “We were expecting civil war, but it looks like they couldn’t deliver,” he says, chuckling.

“We were a bit disappointed when it finished so quickly. We thought the Russians would move their forces back to Russia from our land to solve the issues in their country and leave our country. I hope this war ends soon.”

Svitlana Kovalchuk sells memorabilia on Independence Square, including toilet paper featuring Vladimir Putin’s face.

“Prigozhin for me is a war criminal, killer and executioner of Ukrainian prisoners of war,” the 53-year-old says passionately about Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner mercenary group.

“I have zero expectations of Prigozhin and Russia. Russia died for me back in 2014, when they invaded the Donetsk region” she adds, referring to the attempted annexation of eastern Ukraine in 2014 by Russian-backed separatists.

Lubov Voitseh, 61, a teacher, believes the upheaval in Russia is punishment for the atrocities they’ve committed in Ukraine.

“Everything that is going on there is God's punishment because the Russian people have been supporting their president and military," she says.

"They say they want to liberate us, but we don't need liberation from anyone. We know how to live. We don't need to be dictated by anyone on how to live, or what our rights are.”

Image source, Reuters

The BBC's US news partner, CBS, has just released its full interview with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken - we're digesting it now, and we'll bring you more key lines soon.

But for the moment, let's try to address one of the many unanswered questions from this weekend: What will Putin do next?

Vladimir Putin's widely-noted loathing of betrayal appeared reflected in his stern national TV address on Saturday morning, where he accused Wagner leader Yevgeny Prigozhin of a "stab in the back" and treason.

Russia's president has not been seen in public since, and no new presidential address was being planned in the near future. In a pre-recorded interview on state TV on Sunday - which appeared to have been conducted before the rebellion - Putin said he was confident in the progress of the war in Ukraine.

Anti-terror security measures are still in place in Moscow, but it is unclear whether President Putin is even in the Russian capital at the moment.

Some anticipate Putin will lash out in some way, either militarily at Ukraine, or at those inside Russia who have been unsupportive.

Polish MEP Radek Sikorski told the BBC that the Russian leader would "probably purge those who he saw as wavering", meaning his regime will become "more authoritarian and more brutal at the same time".

More now on the US secretary of state's comments on the situation in Russia.

Antony Blinken says it is too soon to tell what's going to happen next, describing it as a "moving picture and we haven't see the last act yet".

Speaking to CNN, he says we've seen cracks emerge in Putin's authority that weren't there before.

It started with Wagner mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin questioning the premise for the Ukraine war, and now, there's been a "direct challenge to Putin himself", Blinken says.

"This raises lots of profound questions that will be answered in the days and weeks ahead," he added.

Image source, Reuters

We have more comments from US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who has been speaking to various US media outlets - including CNN, ABC, and the BBC's US news partner, CBS.

He has told ABC's This Week Putin's decision to invade Ukraine has created chaos in his own country.

"If you put this in context 16 months ago, Putin was on the doorstep of Kyiv in Ukraine, looking to take the city in a matter of days, erase the country from the map.

"Now, he's had to defend Moscow, Russia's capital, against a mercenary of his own making," Blinken said.

"So, I think this is clearly - we see cracks emerging. Where they go, if anywhere, when they get there, very hard to say. I don't want to speculate on it," he says.

More to come from Blinken - these are perhaps the strongest remarks on the situation in Russia so far that we've seen from a top Western official.

More now from US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who has been speaking to various US media outlets.

It's too soon to say what the future holds for members of the Wagner mercenary group who rebelled yesterday, Blinken says.

As we've been reporting, the Kremlin has said it will not charge any Wagner troops who rebelled yesterday, despite earlier accusing them of armed mutiny.

We'll bring you more of Blinken's comments soon.

More from US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who has been speaking about the short-lived Wagner rebellion in Russia.

The uprising by the private mercenary group and its leader Yevgeny Prigozhin over the weekend was "a direct challenge to Putin's authority", Blinken has said.

"So this raises profound questions, it shows real cracks," Blinken told CBS News talk show Face the Nation.

The US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has been speaking about the situation in Russia.

Blinken says the short-lived rebellion from Wagner mercenaries reveals "real cracks" in Putin's authority, according to the AFP news agency.

We'll bring you more comments from Blinken when we get them.

Image source, Reuters

How is Russia’s political class reacting to yesterday’s rebellion by the Wagner mercenary group?

The views of Sergei Markov, the Russian political scientist and former adviser to President Putin, are one indication.

He told BBC Radio 4’s Broadcasting House programme that the events were “an indicator of some crisis in the Russian government", who are not fully in control of parts of the Russian military.

“So Vladimir Putin will have to change his policy and, under the demand of Russian society, and part of the Russian army, to conduct [a tougher] policy for the winning war in Ukraine," he said.

He said that the Wagner rebellion created a "terrible situation" for Putin and for Russia as a whole, and could've caused a "big civil war".

He said Putin had made "mistakes", but that the main one was "that he trusts Western politicians too much". From now on, Putin may have to rely only on "military force", he said.

• Listen to the full episode of Broadcasting House here.

Vitaly Shevchenko
BBC Monitoring

Wagner leader Yevgeny Prigozhin’s social media accounts have been unusually silent since yesterday evening.

And similarly, Telegram accounts believed to be linked to the Wagner group have offered little commentary or insight into what is likely to happen next.

The Wagner-affiliated Telegram channel Grey Zone , external(which has more than 500,000 subscribers) this morning reposted a poem headlined: “All’s been decided. Almost.”

The poem says: “My bloody, drunken country, what are you doing to me?”

More generally, pro-war commentators on social media are relieved that major bloodshed has been avoided.

“God’s on our side. Disaster has been averted,” says a popular account called Veteran’s Notes, external.

“But lessons must be learnt. Immediately… this must not happen again.”

Image source, Getty Images

The events of this weekend highlight a "real, real weakness in Putin's rule,” the BBC’s world affairs editor says.

Speaking to BBC Radio 5 Live, John Simpson says that for 20 years Putin has - with some ups and downs - always managed to show himself as the big boss.

“You remember all those ludicrous photographs of him bare-backed riding a horse and wrestling,” recalls Simpson.

But the rise of Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin has challenged that.

“Bingo, he's got a blowhard like Prigozhin with a really weird criminal background… building up this really quite impressive military organisation based on cruelty and brutality,” says Simpson.

“The whole of Putin's structure starts to come down as a result.”

Away from the mutiny, fierce fighting continues in Ukraine.

In its latest report, Russia's defence ministry says the country's armed forces repelled numerous attacks by Ukrainian forces in eastern and central Ukraine.

It says that in one area alone - around the Russian-occupied eastern city of Bakhmut - 10 Ukrainian assaults were rebuffed in the past 24 hours.

On Saturday evening, Ukraine's Deputy Defence Minister Hanna Maliar said Ukrainian troops had managed to advance around Bakhmut and nearby areas.

The claims by the warring sides have not been independently verified.

Image source, Reuters

As Wagner troops advanced towards Moscow on Saturday, security was tightened in the Russian capital.

The main Red Square remains closed to the public on Sunday - as these pictures show.

Image source, Reuters

Mikhail Kasyanov was Russia's prime minister under Putin from 2000-04. But since being sacked, he's become one of the leading critics of the president.

Asked by the BBC's Broadcasting House programme where he thinks Prigozhin will go, he said: "I think first he will go to Belarus, but I think he will go from Belarus to Africa and be somewhere in the jungle or something like that.

"Mr Putin cannot forgive him for this."

Prigozhin, he says, has destroyed Putin's stability - and his life will be under "a big question" as a result.

For Putin, says Kasyanov, this is "the beginning of the end... he's in very big trouble right now."

Lipetsk is the latest Russian region to report the withdrawal of Wagner mercenaries.

Earlier on Sunday, Wagner units were seen leaving the nearby Voronezh district.

And on late on Saturday, they were seen retreating from the city of Rostov-on-Don, further south.

You can see our map below.

Wagner fighters have now left the Lipetsk region in central Russia, local officials say.

The region lies more than 300km (186 miles) south of Moscow.

Wagner mercenaries stopped their march on the capital about 200km away from the city, following a reported deal to end their mutiny.

The Kremlin line that no charges will be brought against Wagner leader Yevgeny Prigozhin or his troops for their rebellion is "extremely surprising", the BBC's Eastern Europe correspondent Sarah Rainsford says.

It's not in character for Putin to "step back like that in such a dramatic way" after accusing Prigozhin of betraying him and stabbing him in the back, she says.

Rainsford adds that so many questions remain unanswered, not least Prigozhin's freedom and security, which may depend on what he does in Belarus.

He's unlikely to want to drive a tractor or dig potatoes, she says.

Putin, she says, is likely to respond to yesterday's events with more repression and hunting down of anyone associated with the revolt.

He'll also try to refocus attention on what he regards as the threat to Russia from the West and Ukraine, Rainsford adds.

Jaroslav Lukiv

Image source, Reuters

Earlier, we reported that the whereabouts of Wagner group boss Yevgeny Prigozhin were currently unknown.

But what about Russian President Vladimir Putin?

Well, pretty much the same - we don't know, is the honest answer.

On Saturday morning, the Kremlin leader condemned the Wagner mutiny in a televised speech, but it's not clear whether this was a live broadcast or pre-recorded.

Later in the day, media reports said the presidential aircraft that Putin normally uses left the capital Moscow, heading north-west. It then disappeared off the radar in the region around Tver.

Tracking data on the flighradar24 website seem to confirm this information - but we don't know if Putin was on that plane.

This came amid media speculation that the president was going to one of his underground bunkers in the area, as Wagner mercenaries were marching on Moscow.

But presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov dismissed these reports, saying Putin was working in his Kremlin residence.

Late on Saturday - after a deal to end the mutiny was reportedly brokered - Peskov said that no new presidential address was being planned in the near future.

The deal to end the rebellion will, according to the Kremlin, send Wagner leader Yevgeny Prigozhin to Belarus.

The deal was brokered by Belarus' authoritarian leader Alexander Lukashenko.

Belarus is located in central Europe and is bordered by Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Lithuania and Latvia.

Lukashenko has ruled with an iron fist since 1994. Opposition figures are subjected to harsh penalties for organising protests.

In 2005, Belarus was listed by the US as Europe's only remaining "outpost of tyranny".

In the Soviet post-war years, Belarus became one of the most prosperous parts of the USSR, but with independence came economic decline.

It is heavily dependent on Russia for its energy supplies.

Read more in our Belarus country profile here.

Image source, Reuters

The Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin - who has agreed to end his rebellion - has thrived in the chaos of wartime, says Jack Losh, an independent journalist and filmmaker who recently returned from Ukraine and has reported extensively on the Wagner Group.

Speaking to BBC Radio 5 Live from London, Losh said: “The last sixteen months of war has allowed Wagner to transform itself from an elite, but relatively small force… to a large multi-tiered core size formation - in other words a private army to be reckoned with."

He thinks the deal to end the rebellion, hashed out with the Wagner soldiers and Prigozhin, is a short-term compromise rather than a long-term solution: “It certainly raises more questions than answers”.

Losh says Putin is left looking weak after this deal, but it does not leave Prigozhin in a strong position either.

“I'd be watching behind my back for a long time to come because we know that the Putin system does not forgive, and it certainly does not forget,” he says.