JOHN YANG: Tonight on PBS News Weekend, the fallout from the short lived rebellion inside Russia and what it means for the future of President Vladimir Putin.

Then the youngest victims the effect violence of a two-month old conflict in Sudan is having on children, and a conversation with the first official drag laureate, San Francisco's D'Arcy Drollinger.

D'ARCY DROLLINGER, Drag Laureate: I've been asked this question a number of times like why is drag important and why is anything important?

Why is dance important?

Why is theater important?

Why is fine art important?

(BREAK) JOHN YANG: Good evening, I'm John Yang.

The most significant challenge to Russian President Vladimir Putin is two decades in power lasted only about 24 hours.

But today there are questions about the long term consequences.

The streets of Moscow were quiet today as the last Russian troops left the capital to the south of Yevgeny Prigozhin and his Wagner mercenary group were cheered as they left Rostov-on-Don late last night.

They had captured the city just that morning.

The deal that diffused the mutiny calls for Prigozhin to live in exile in Belarus.

On NBC's Meet the Press Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the episode was a blow to Putin's authority.

ANTONY BLINKEN, U.S. Secretary of State: I think we've seen more cracks emerge in the Russian facade, it is too soon to tell exactly where they go and when they get there.

But certainly, we have all sorts of new questions that Putin is going to have to address in the weeks and months ahead.

JOHN YANG: Blinken also said it's unclear whether the Wagner fighters will return to the battlefield in Ukraine.

Angela Stent is a Russia expert.

She worked in the State Department during the Clinton administration and was a top intelligence officer during the administration of George W. Bush.

She's now a professor at Georgetown University.

Angela, you heard Secretary of State cracks in the façade.

Is it possible to tell how deep those cracks run?

How weakened is Putin now?

ANGELA STENT, Georgetown University: It's very difficult.

There's a lot that we don't know about what happened yesterday and what led up to it.

And it could just be the first act in a much longer drama.

But clearly, the fact that Prigozhin's troops were able to get within 200 kilometers of Moscow that they were as you just showed welcomed when they were in Rostov and they were cheered as they left.

That raised serious questions about the security services in Russia, about the military.

And about Putin's own future.

He certainly looks weaker emerging from this.

But then there's a lot that we don't know.

And let's wait and see where and when Prigozhin shows up again, isn't going to be Belarus.

We'll have to see.

JOHN YANG: You talked about the progress Prigozhin made on his advanced to Moscow.

What was the leverage or the -- was there a stick or a carrot that made him stop?

ANGELA STENT: So it's, again, we don't know a lot, but it's possible that he thought there would be more support for him from some of the top people in Moscow.

And it's possible when it became clear that that wasn't so that made him rethink what he was doing, because otherwise, it looks as if they could have reached Moscow pretty quickly.

And may, you know, and taken over, which is what people thought they would at the beginning of the day.

Or it's possible that a deal was made with him yesterday, where he was promised that both the Defense Minister and the Chief of the General Staff would be fired, which is what he'd been calling for, for months, saying they were incompetent.

But that, of course, hasn't happened yet.

So I think we'll have to wait and see.

JOHN YANG: Is a weakened Putin or at least a publicly chastised Putin, it's dangerous?

Do you -- is there concern that it'll do something rash, just to show that he's in charge?

ANGELA STENT: I think one could always have those concerns.

But I think there must be a lot of things going on that we don't know about right now inside the Kremlin.

It's, I mean, what's interesting is that none of his colleagues, not one of them has come out publicly and supported him, and that he did not announce the deal with Prigozhin yesterday, but his press secretary did, and he's been completely absent today.

Nothing, no public figures in Moscow.

So I think when gets to have to have some concern about what's going on inside the Kremlin, and how they going to deal with this.

JOHN YANG: As you say that he didn't say anything about this deal.

It was brokered by Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko.

Why do you think Lukashenko got involved?

ANGELA STENT: Well, I mean, that's what we're told.

And it may be true, they certainly put it out on all the media that he was the one who broke it.

And he's, of course a loyal ally of Putin.

He's very subordinate to Putin, and very dependent on him.

And maybe Putin wanted to make it look as if, you know, his hands hadn't touched this and left it to someone else to do it so that he wasn't actually himself negotiating with Prigozhin.

JOHN YANG: You said that there's a possibility that the Defense Minister and the General Chief of Staff may resign, which is what Prigozhin wanted, but did Prigozhin accomplish anything?

ANGELA STENT: I think what he accomplished was showing the Russian people to the extent that they knew what was going on, and the Kremlin, that he has quite a lot of support.

He has come out as a populist figure.

He actually said a couple of days ago, that the war in Ukraine was a big mistake, and that Ukraine wasn't threatening Russia.

And it was oligarchs in Russia who wanted to get their hands on assets in Ukraine.

And that was the reason for the war.

And the fact that that clearly does have a resonance, and then telling the Russian people that their sons and brothers are dying in this miserable fashion, and the children of the elite are sitting in the south of France and enjoying their cocktails.

I think all of that has a resonance.

And I think that should get everyone in the Kremlin thinking about what it means to continue this war.

JOHN YANG: And yesterday was tension between Russians, Russian against Russian, while the Ukrainians were sort of forgotten in this, what's the effect of this on the war?

ANGELA STENT: So I'm not sure that it does have that much of an effect on the wall unless Putin were really to rethink whether Russia should continue this law, which we haven't seen any signs of yet.

I think the Ukrainians will continue their counteroffensive and the Russians will continue defending against it.

So if there was an opportunity, it might have been yesterday if this had ended differently, but the way it's ended now, I think the wall will just continue.

JOHN YANG: Angela Stent of Georgetown University, thank you very much.

Across much of the United States, forecasters are predicting extreme heat especially in the South.

More than 40 million people are expected to experience dangerous heat.

Hardest hit will be Texas where a heatwave is entering its third week.

Temperatures they're expected soar past 100 degrees.

Texas power utility says the state's electrical grid which failed during a cold snap in 2021 should hold but to be safe, they've asked residents to cut back on air conditioning.

And the Coast Guard announced today that it has ended search and rescue operations for the Titan submersible.

The craft imploded underwater this past week while taking five people to explore the wreckage of the Titanic, all aboard died.

The Coast Guard's priority shifts to try to recover the pieces of a Titan from the ocean floor.

There will be a full investigation to determine the cause of a tragedy.

Still to come on PBS News Weekend, how the youngest victims of conflict and Sudan are coping as they flee the violence and the little known story of writer Alice Dunbar Nelson, who fought for racial equality and voting rights for women.

(BREAK) JOHN YANG: The airstrikes and artillery fire intensified today and parts of Sudan were fighting enters its 11th week, at least 860 people have lost their lives, and more than half a million have fled the country.

The conflict in this northeast African nation pits government forces against a rival paramilitary faction.

Both sides have been accused of human rights violations.

Ali Rogin has the latest on the traumatic effects of the violence on Sudan's children.

ALI ROGIN: As control of Sudan hangs in the balance so too do the lives and futures have more than 1 million children displaced by the violence.

Many of these children have been displaced within the country itself.

In addition to humanitarian assistance, many are seeking physical and psychological healing from the deep scars of war.

Dr. Arif Noor is one of the people on the ground helping the children of Sudan through this crisis.

He is the Sudan Country Director for Save the Children.

Dr. Noor, thank you so much for joining us.

You've been and your organization have been on the ground in Sudan for well before this fighting started.

There's long been need for your services there.

What has changed about the needs of children since this fighting began.

DR. ARIF NOOR, Country Director, Save the Children Sudan: Around 16 million people in the country were in need of humanitarian assistance.

But since the conflict has broken out, this number has increased by 56 percent.

And now almost half of the population of the country is in need of dire humanitarian assistance.

And of these almost 25 million people, more than 12 million are children.

They have been exposed to the sights, the sounds, and off the violence around them.

So even if they are not directly seeing people hurt or killed, they are hearing stories of their friends, family members being killed being injured, and that has had serious consequences for their mental and psychosocial well-being.

Many children have lost their lives, and many more have been displaced inside the country.

ALI ROGIN: What have you been hearing about what those journeys have been like for these children?

And do they tend to be accompanied by adults?

Are they largely arriving unaccompanied?

What does that look like?

ARIF NOOR: While the children move away from the conflict affected areas, they may be running away from the conflict.

But that doesn't mean that they are still out of danger.

For example, exploitation, abuse, and many times sexual abuse, especially of young girls, that has been going on at a scale, which has been unprecedented in Sudan.

Many times they are received at concentration points which do not have access to nutritious food, access to clean drinking water access to proper sanitation facilities.

These places are many times overcrowded.

So that's the kind of situation that children are facing right now.

ALI ROGIN: Dr. Noor, I want to play you what one of your psychologists said.

MAAB ADELHALIM, Psychologist, Save the Children (through translator): At bedtime when his mother asks him to sleep, he refuses and sits like that.

He tells her you go to bed.

I'm sitting here.

The mother told me they didn't see anything, but they could hear the fighting noise.

ALI ROGIN: What sort of care are you able to provide to these children and what has the fallout been from their experience of these traumatic events.

ARIF NOOR: I recently visited several of our feed locations where our teams are providing the support to children and their families.

And we came across one child who just did not speak for the first couple of weeks, but later on by our teams started engaging with the child and gradually the child started speaking up.

And now they are talking to their friends and to their caregivers.

These are the kinds of trauma that children have to have had to go through and our teams that consistently work with them to make sure that they are able to reintegrate come back to a semblance of normal life.

It is far from that because many children want to go back to their homes, so arrangements need to be made so that they can get back to their normal lives.

ALI ROGIN: There was recently a pledging conference in which wealthy nations pledged donations to help Sudan rebuild and the those numbers fell well short of what's projected as the total needed to rebuild the country following this violence.

What more does the international community need to do?

And is there a role that the Sudanese government itself needs to step up and provide?

ARIF NOOR: Yeah, I think the international community needs to come together to assess the warring factions in the country to come to some sort of a settled situation where peace can return to the country.

The biggest barrier for the time being is the ongoing violence, in addition to the bureaucratic impediments, which are there for the humanitarian community even before the conflict if those can be eased down a little bit, to make sure that the humanitarian community is able to reach to the people in need.

All of these things can help make sure that we are able to reach out to these people swiftly and support them.

ALI ROGIN: Dr. Arif Noor, Sudan Country Director for the humanitarian group, Save the Children.

Thank you so much for your time.

ARIF NOOR: Thank you very much.

JOHN YANG: This year's Pride Month is D'Arcy Drollinger's first as San Francisco's official drag laureate, in her new position, believed to be the first of its kind.

The artist and club owner is an ambassador for the city's LGBTQ plus arts, nightlife and entertainment communities.

The post was created by the mayor and Drollinger assumes that in a year that seen a record number of anti-LGBTQ plus legislation introduced around America, Ali Rogin is back with a conversation with Drollinger about her new role.

ALI ROGI: D'Arcy Drollinger, thank you so much for joining us.

First of all, I have to ask you, how did this opportunity come about?

How did you learn that mere breed was establishing this position?

D'ARCY DROLLINGER: Well, the city put out a press release that the position was open, and they were accepting applicants and I applied.

Now, some of my staff at work begged me not to that I was too busy.

But it felt like, you know, it made a lot of sense, a lot of the things that were looking for were things that I was already doing.

So I went ahead and applied.

And the rest is history.

ALI ROGIN: And what did you learn about the reasons why you were selected?

D'ARCY DROLLINGER: I am an entrepreneur.

I have a local business in San Francisco, I run a nightclub in Cabaret.

And I've also started a nonprofit.

I have, you know, a place in the community.

So that made sense.

But I think, you know, just talking to the mayor and having the panel review who I am and what I do made a lot of sense.

But I think the bottom line the mayor said was that I was willing to throw my support behind anybody.

And I think that sort of openness and willing to support the community was a linchpin in choosing me.

ALI ROGIN: And talking about your support to the community.

You mentioned, you're an entrepreneur, you have a business.

And, I mean, entertainment in and of itself is I personally think a public service.

But you really stepped that up to the next level during the pandemic.

And I want to hear about what you did you had a program called Meals on Heels.

Tell me about that.

D'ARCY DROLLINGER: Yeah, well, you know, I really took stock and who I was in the community and who the people around me are, and we're entertainers and when going gets tough our job is to entertain.

And so we very quickly pivoted, and we created a program called Meals on Heels where we partnered with local restaurants and did a food delivery service by drag performers, which would get your food delivered and you get a curbside performance.

And this was at a very dark time where people felt very isolated.

And it was -- I was able to help the small businesses in my neighborhood, I was able to employ drag performers who suddenly were out of work and also, you know, create a little sparkle in people's lives who were struggling at the time.

ALI ROGIN: Absolutely.

Obviously, the LGBTQ plus community anywhere is not a monolith.

But I want to ask, what does it mean for you?

What does it mean for other members of this community to have recognition in this way?

D'ARCY DROLLINGER: It's huge, really.

I mean, and I applaud San Francisco because this is a program that they've actually been rolling out for a couple years.

And finally, we made it.

You know, drag performers in San Francisco are really given a place in this community and we you know, we not only entertain but we do a lot of civic.

We have a lot of civic contributions, and we do a lot of fundraising and, and I feel like San Francisco is leading the way, you know, while it is a drag laureate position, it really is recognizing the community, the LGBTQ plus community.

ALI ROGIN: And let's talk about what are some of your responsibilities as the drag laureate of San Francisco.

D'ARCY DROLLINGER: Oh my God.

There are so many.

I mean, there are the more symbolic ones, like I, you know, helped raise the Pride flag with the mayor on the beginning of June, and I threw the first pitch the Giants game, which pretty epic thing to do.

But it also the responsibilities are really about creating bridges through the different city organizations and the LGBTQ plus community.

Also, elevating and celebrating the art of drag, I think is really important.

And it's an art form that doesn't always get the attention that it deserves, like a poet laureate, but taking dragon in that way.

ALI ROGIN: Yeah, I want to ask you about some serious stuff, which is there are a number of states that have already passed anti-drag bans, there's more legislatures working on putting such bans in place.

So what does it mean to have this position, elevating drag performance in this way?

D'ARCY DROLLINGER: I think it's very important because it does have -- San Francisco has made a stand and that we actually value drag performers, trans people, LGBTQ plus community members.

I mean, really, it's been tough, because it has been so much -- there's been so much propaganda that is not true categorically.

Not true.

But it creates this level of hostility towards drag performers.

I mean, wherever you have to up our security, I spent a lot more money on security now than I used to, which is so sad and such a shame.

And really, when it boils down to it, I mean, it isn't really anti-drag, it's anti LGBTQ plus, right.

That is what it is.

We're just trying to live our lives and entertain people.

You know, I've been asked this question a number of times, like why is drag important and why is anything important?

Why is dance important?

Why is theater important?

Why is fine art important?

You know, it's another art form.

And drag has been going on for over 400 years.

I'm sure longer than that.

So it's nothing new it is part of our lives all around the world.

And it's interesting to me that is become such a hot topic now.

And really, it's -- it shouldn't be an issue and in all these people that's about personal freedom, right, and their First Amendment, Second Amendment rights.

Well, like give me my rights, right.

So I feel like drag is something beautiful and sparkly and fun.

It doesn't make any sense to me.

ALI ROGIN: D'Arcy Drollinger, drag laureate of San Francisco, thank you so much for joining us.

D'ARCY DROLLINGER: Thanks for having me.

JOHN YANG: As we begin the final week of Pride Month, our series hidden histories takes a look at the bisexual black woman whose writing and activism advocated racial equality and women's suffrage at the turn of the 20th century.

Alice Dunbar Nelson wrote in many forms, short stories, essays and poetry, and is one of the few black female diaries the early 20th century she detailed her life work and loves, including clandestine romantic relationships with women.

Born Alice Moore in New Orleans in 1875.

Her mother was a former enslaved woman.

While her father's identity is disputed, scholars say he was likely white.

Dunbar Nelson graduated from what's now known as Dillard University, a historically black school in New Orleans.

She was one of the very few children of formerly enslaved people to go to college.

After a brief time teaching elementary school, she began her pursuit of a literary career.

Her first collection of short stories and poetry, Violets and Other Tales, was published in 1895.

It's regarded as the first known work of its kind by a black woman.

She would continue to publish poetry and short stories throughout her life writing about racism and oppression, and challenging the conventions of gender and marriage.

Dunbar Nelson had three husbands including internationally acclaimed poet Paul Laurence Dunbar, their short lived union was marked by physical and emotional abuse.

She also had relationships with women, including journalist Fay M. Jackson, poet Helene Ricks London and educator Edwina Cruz, who once wrote to Dunbar Nelson, we were more than sisters.

Starting in the 1910s, Dunbar Nelson became involved in efforts for women's voting rights and to enact a anti lynching legislation.

In the 1920s, she turned to journalism, writing essays and articles that explored the issues she campaigned for activism that characterized the remainder of her life.

And online right now the story of how oyster shells discarded by Louisiana restaurants are being used to restore the state's coastline.

All that and more is on our website pbs.org/newshour.

And that is PBS News Weekend for this Sunday.

I'm John Yang.

Thanks for joining us.

For all my colleagues have a good week.