despite first round of sanctions and secretary blinken sayings there is no reason to show up. >> and on banks throughout the day. this morning at the u.n. general assembly meeting, u.s. ambassador slamming russia for its brazen play for large areas of eastern ukraine. >> russia's actions have only confirmed what we and other nations have been warning about. other u.n. member states must recognize the threat before us all today before it's too late. colleagues, there's no middle ground here. calling for both sides to deescalate only gives russia a pass.

russia is the aggressor here. >> the ambassador will join me in a moment and a final choice among three potential supreme court candidates who he's now interviewed in person. the finalists are california supreme court justice leondra kruger and ketanji brown jackson and michelle childs. he said it's going to come before the state of the union address, which is next tuesday. and anticipated new masking guiden as covid cases continue a welcome downward trend of daily national cases falling to the lowest point in three months and deaths down 40% from omicron's peek. we begin with the ongoing crisis in ukraine. richard engel, nbc senior international correspondent in moscow and kristen welker, host

of "weekend day." let's begin with what you saw earlier today. you're close to where the separatist forces are stationed and tell us about cyber attacks against key ministries in kyiv. >> reporter: so, i'll start with what we saw on the front. we were in the trenches today, an area we visited before and it's very close to the separatist areas and we saw a lot more separatist fire. they're firing on to nearby villages, on to soldiers, houses. the shells were coming in fairly regularly and a local commander said it has been consistent at that level for the last several days but compared to what it was two weeks ago, three weeks ago, that this is a completely different scale of what they've seen before and i asked what why

he thought this was happening and why are the russians backed by russia and why they're intensifying their attacks now. he thought it was in advance of a larger assault. he said that their strategy might be that they're trying to keep the soldiers busy, exhaust them, demoralize them before launching a major push into this country. and now i think on a national level, we are seeing the ukrainian government bracing for the eventuality. there's a strong movement to impose a state of emergency in ukraine that could go into effect midnight tonight. and that state of emergencyb according to a draft circulating, would give the government the ability to restrict movement, seize private property and convert industries for military purposes. they're saying it's only temporary.

and would only last for 30 days and go away if the need is no longer there. but they say said it is necessary to take these measures in light of the possible russian invasion. we're really seeing kind of world war ii measures where you're having the government possibly preparing and and as

europe looks like it's on the brink of another conflict. at the hands of president putin. i was talking to a former deputy foreign minister here in russia with very good connections within their presidential administration. he says that the current sanctions as imposed do not have a current effect on president putin but there is very serious

talk here about what might be imposed, what he described as potentially a financial iron curtain. of course, at the same time, he says president putin in the past few weeks has been meeting with russian banks in preparation for the possibility of sanctions. he says president putin, he believes, was advised earlier on in the tense build up, that kyiv government would fall if we put enough pressure on ukraine. but in fact, there is a realization within the russian government that isn't the case. there aren't pro-russian forces to make that happen. someone else i spoke to with good connections to the kremlin suggesting what president putin is looking for is to rap any action in a claim he can move into support, to defend

separatists in that eastern ukraine. that would be propaganda. but that might explain some of what richard is describing as a small conflict. >> indeed. exactly those kinds of trying to provoke the ukrainians to respond and say that's the pretext. kristen, the president and his sanctions getting criticism, certainly from some republicans, who said they should have been tougher. bob menendez saying okay so far. are we're going to hear more about it at the state department on nord stream 2 by those who say it is more significant than has been criticized. that it isn't a temporary suspension. >> reporter: you have democrats largely saying we support what the president announced yesterday as a first step but keep up the pressure.

and then you have republicans who say the president's missing the moment to really get tough with president putin because clearly he has not been dissueded so far by the threat of sanctions and by the initial rounds of sanctions we're seeing. the white house on defense as it has laid out what its thinking is in terms of rolling out sanctions during the briefing yesterday. press secretary was pressed on this repeatedly. as was the national security advisor. basically they're top sanctions. they're targeting two large financial institutions. the debt of russia as well as elites, who are close to president putin. they think it's going to have a bite and yet they say we're holding out the toughest sanks as an attempt to deter putin from going any further and as punishment if he does. that's the thinking is to defend

here within the biden administration and the other key question is are the hopes for diplomacy just dashed at this point, given you have the secretary of state canceling his planned meeting with sergey lavrov and of course the meeting with biden and putin is off. >> in fact, he was going to fly out already this morning and we're basically told no plans. and he said on camera yesterday there was no point because it's clear that russia has no interest in diplomacy. kristen welker and of course, pierre simmons and richard engel. ben, thank you very much. this might seem like déjà vu because of crimea in 2014. and sanction them and he bounces back and doesn't seem to pay any penalty and crimea is still under russian control. what could this president do

that would be tougher, stronger? would it be the swift sanctions that would kick russia out of the entire international financial system? >> yes, andrea. there's different gradations of sanctions. i think everybody expects a future traunch would include a wider net of russian banks, a wider net of putin-associated oligarchs,s a well as control that deny them need particularly in the military and tech sector. if you're talking about the most significant sanctions that could be imposed. those would get at the ability to export oil and gas. as well as like you said the most dramatic financial sanction, cutting them off from the swift system. however, those most severe sanctions would have very

significant repercussions on u.s. economy and european economy. and the reality, you ask about 2014. look when the lesson here may just be that you can impose a punishment with sanctions, a cost and you can damage the russian economy but at no juncture has it appeared that sanctions are effecting putin's own decision making. he knows and i think u.s. has communicated to him in this episode, what the likely sanctions will be and if you look at what he's saying and doing, does not appear that is having a deterrent effect on him. >> you raise an important point. in talking to people over munich, is this the pragmatic or the philosophical view that cannot be changed? and in reading his speech, through translation but the speech the other day and comparing it to the 2007 warning about nato, it seems to go back

to nato enlargement and just fury about that. and that's something that can't be changed. we can debate whether nato enlargement was smart in 1998 but that's what's happened and you're not going to take poland and lithuania and these countries out. i don't know what you can do to stop vladimir putin from what u.s. intelligence, according to the president and uth orficials, the president said on friday night and others since, they think he's going to go to kyiv, take controil of ukraine because he believes it's part of mother russia. >> i mean i think it's worse than what you say around nato enlargement. if you look at putin's evolution from the first term to the crimea annexation to the man we saw the other day, this is somebody who's listening to fewer and fewer people.

the circle around him is closing. it may just be a circle of one. vladimir putin and his own ideology. if you listen to his speech and comments, what he's talking about is not nato enlargement. it's deep-rooted historical grievances, idological believes in ukraine not having any validity as an independent country. this goes beyond grievances just about the '90s and the end of the cold war. this is somebody, i think, who may be about the make the most consequential decision, taking an enormous risk for the russian people and obviously taking a devastating step for the ukrainian people in global security and he doesn't seem to be listening to anybody except the most extreme ideologues around him and in that scenario, sanctions even hurt his former close associate and people who have been in the in urcircle.

it seems like a man who believes he's on a historical mission to restore russia to a position of greatness that he believes it's been denied since the end of the cold war. >> and very quickly, what do you think of former president trump and mike pompeo talking about him being strong. >> it's completely absurd and completely damaging to u.s. interests at this point because people have to understand those comments are playing in a loop on russian television. they feed right into putin's propaganda and at the precise moment you want to signal how isolated he is, you have the former president of the united states and likely republican nominee and the former secretary of state praising his leadership. that dramatically undercuts the capacity to isolate him globally and frankly makes a bit of a mockery of what you were referring to earlier, which is

some republicans criticizing the sanctions as not going far enough but the leader of their party is saying that this is actually a stroke of genius by vlad near putin. so, mixed messages. >> like the helisinky news conference 2.0. thank you as always. and take warning as putin's forces move farther west, they warn the world that russia will not stop. straight ahead the ambassador to the united nations, linda thomas-greenfield fresh off her remarks. reenfield fresh off her remarks. imagine a world where we have the tools to sell things that mean something. like a sunscreen made for melanated skin

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the this is president putin's war of choice. if he chooses to escalate further, russia and russia alone will bear full responsibility

for what's to come. >> a clear message to her diplomatic colleagues in u.n. and ambassador, thank you very much for being with us. so, we saw your condemnation of russia's actions, they could not have been stronger. but what will the u.n. do? the general assembly, to my knowledge, doesn't have a condimentination on agenda and the security council is led by russia this month, which wouldn't matter in any case because as a member, they can veto anything the counsel does. >> you know, this is just the start, andrea. this meeting is a regular meeting of the general assembly but we were able to stand in front of the world and share with the world what we are seeing happening in russia and russia heard strong condemnation, not only from the secretary general but also from member states.

and despite the fact that they happen to be president of the security council, we still are able to hold meetings and, as you know, we had an emergency meeting monday night to deal with the situation related to ukraine. we've had an earlier meeting that the russiansal, under the russians chairmanship on the 17th of february, where secretary blinken spoke and we had a meeting on january 31st. so, russia is not in a position to block the security council. they may have a veto but as i've said over and over again, they cannot veto our voices. they cannot stop the world from hearing about their aggression. and the actions that they're taking to compromise the u.n. charter and to threaten ukraine's borders and their sovereignty. >> the president made it very

clear friday night that his expectation was vladimir putin go all the way to kyiv; that this was more likely a large invasion, not just in the ooers where there are russian separatists and you could try, with a false pretext, to justify moving in. we've seen, not only their declaring independence and the day before security arachgsmentes rangements and talking about going farther through the ukrainian strongly held sections of donbas. he still has landing ships. larger warships on the black sea. he can virtually control the air through his s-400s in belarus. you see any sign he's not going to launch a massive invasion? >> we see no signs of the russians withdrawing. we see no signs they are leaning

towards finding a diplomatic solution forward. what we see is continued russian aggression. continued efforts by the russians to blame ukraine for the situation and also we're beginning to see cyber attacks. we're seeing misinformation. so, right now, everything points to the fact that russia intends to continue to invade ukraine even further and as the president said, everything we're seeing suggests they may be moving towards kyiv. >> there's reporting from bloomberg that the sanctions we're expecting on the nord stream 2 nayclude against the builder of the pipeline itself. toughening that in some other of the oligarchs. there's no sign that sanctions will deter vladimir putin. he seems ideologically

committed, saying ukraine should be part of russia? >> well, we have been clear these sanctions will hurt. and as the russia starts to feel the impact of the sanctions, we are looking to see their response and hopefully their response will be to come back the negotiating table because they will hurt. and what the sanctions -- what we've been able to do with the sanctions is get a unified position from the rest of europe as welt. others have joined us in the sanctions including what we worked closely with germany on the nord stream 2 and russia will feel the impact. the people of russia need to be asking vladimir putin how far is he willing to go to sacrifice russian lives in this war? again, we have not taken

diplomacy off the table. we're still ready, as the president noted, to find a way forward through our diplomatic means if the russians will accept that. but we're also ready to continue to ratchet up these sanctions and our response to this russian aggression. >> ambassador wrote a very alarming letter earlier this week to the u.n. high commissioner for human rights. excuse me. michelle. apology there. that letter outlined potential, you know, horrific actions against resisters, journalists, other ukrainians who might be on the lists already. how concerned are we about that? and is there anything in the u.s. or u.n. can do to protect them? >> we're clearly concerned. and that's why ambassador

crocker sent that letter to the high commissioner. and it is why we have been warning over the course of many weeks of the dire consequences of russian invasion in ukraine. i will also add that it's important that we are now back on the security council and we can use that bench at the security council to make sure that we hold russia accountable. so, this letter was just the start of making sure that this is on the agenda of the human rights counsel. but we will continue to engage with the counsel, with the members and also in new york with the member states to hold russia accountable for any as that they take in ukraine. do you think the u.s., under some circumstances, should be supporting, not just arming and training, but supporting the insurgency in more material ways? >> we're working with nato and

supporting our nato allies on the border. and as you noted, we're doing training and providing equipment. we've not taken anything off the table but right now there's no insurgency. the government of ukraine is still standing. and as you heard from their president and foreign minister, they're prepared to fight back. >> and finally, the president and other officials had been warning for ten days, at least, for americans to get out of ukraine while they could still goat out commercially and cross borders and u.s. troops would not go in and those troops in poland are there to help refugees who might be coming out but they're not going to cross in and risk crossing into a nonnato country. that said, will the president of the united states be able to permit americans to be at risk,

americans who get trap there had? >> this is why for days we have been encouraging americans to get out when it's permissible to get out. we can't fly american troops into a conflict zone to get out americans to encourage the lead and we're still encouraging americans to get out now. we don't know what the situation will be like on the ground. we're assisting any americans through our embassy employees who are still working to support americans and we will do everything possible to support american citizens but they need to also be responsible and make the right decisions. to move ait's permissible. >> it's good of you to take the time. thank you for your updates today. >> thank you, andrea. and we have only days to go.

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as the president's self-impose monday deadline approaches, sources tell nbc news the president spoke with two federal judges, ketanji brown jackson and california supreme court justice, kruger. joining us is barbara mcquaid. always good to see you. we're down to the wire. any moment this could come between now and march first. so, what do you think would help make the final decision, presuming you have well qualified potential nominees? >> no doubt the three nominees are imminently qualified based on experience as judges, training. what it comes down to, i think, is the political moment of getting them through the conformation process.

i take him at his word as a former senator and chair of the judiciary committee. he said he was not going to get the consent of the enist but advice of the senate. i'm sure he has been consulting with members of the senate to get their input on which candidate might be appropriate for the seat and the other thing i think might be important is two are battle tested. they've already been confirmed by the senate. judge ketanji brown jackson has been fairly recently confirmed to the d.c. court of appeals. and south carolina has been confirmed for the district court. leondra kruger, although she seems like an incredible juris has not gone through that process as an elected official on the california supreme court. in my view, that gives an edge to ketanji brown jackson and michelle chooilds and probably a

slight edge to jackson because she's been confirmed on the higher loevl court. she's probably the safest pick of the three. >> although judge childs has the advantage of not only the support of jim clyburn from south carolina and also lindsey graham. a key member of the republican -- on the judiciary committee. >> i think that's a great point and she has -- her stock has risen for that very reason. there are some who say joe biden owes south carolina for a favor during the 2020 presidential election and maybe there is political payback there. you raise an important point which is bipartisan support could be important, not just to get the candidate through. it looks like manchin and sinema, although they make trouble on other issues, have not done so on judicial nominations. i think there's value for

supreme court nominee because the court's legitimacy depends on there being public confidence in their independent and if they're perceived as the favorite candidate of one political party or the other, their decisions are met with less public confidence. so, having bipartisanship doesn't always matter but does very much on this matter. >> thank you so varmuch, barbara mcquaid. and capital security ahead of president biden's first state of the union. concerns about a potential trucker protest in d.c., like the one that nearly shut down canada's capitol. down canada's capitol and unforeseeable. for investors who can navigate this landscape, leveraging gold, a strategic and sustainable asset...

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streets. this inspired by a week's long blockade in ottawa. joining us is senior capitol hill correspondent haig and ashley parker to talk more broadly about the state of the union. 700 national guard troops. the pentagon says they'll not be armed, make arrests or do surveillance on citizens. they'll be assisting the metropolitan police. freeing up metropolitan police for other functions. that's to be clear they're under army command. national guard command. not an army take over militarizing the district of columbia? >> no, that's not the case. and not entirely clear how much of the law enforcement presence is going to end up being necessary. in the last day i talked to the

maryland state police, the d.c. and capitol police and now we have the statement from the national guard. everyone of the law enforcement agencies was watching the protest in canada. they're aware of several different trucker protests across the country. one supposedly from california and one that left from pennsylvania this morning. these convoys have been disorganized, not unified in pourp purpose, cope or in logistics. they've basically entirely fallen apart already. there's widespread watching of what's going on here but not yet widespread concern and that's the feeling i got from speaker pelosi when i asked about overall confidence level this week. >> a chief of police had called for the national guard to be present, leading up to and around the time of the state of the union that they have a good

handle on what the expectation is. some of it won't come until after the state of the union. but i feel confident. >> as for the fence gets a lot of attention, she pointed out that's not her call. but as you know, state of the union is a special national security event. there will be tons of security, not just on that day but really leading up to and now it appears given the timeline of the trucker protests, likely straight on through the week. >> thank you so much and ashley, let's talk about the state of the union and what the president is dealing with. so, the war in ukraine and there's a lot of tension and certainly not the kind of bipartisan senate support and house support that we've had in previous years and inflation.

covid is still a problem and when will the cdc make its ruling and an iran decision, which is going to set off a firestorm on capitol hill. how does he decide what to do first? >> state of the union addresses are always a grab bag and you laid out well all of the challenges the president is facing. with the supreme court nominee, which is going to be announced before the state of the union, the president has what he believes is a great story to tell. you can bet that will be a part of it. another thing he can't control is what we're seeing unfold in ukraine and russia. and there's a world in which the president will need to or want to use a bit of the address to the nation to talk about what he started talking about a bit before and explain what

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joining us is foreign affairs columnist for the "washington post" and counsel on foreign relations. the intelligence leads us to believe we're seeing only part one of vladimir putin's playbook. the propaganda, disinformation, the moves against now all of donbas, potentially from what he's said as well as intermittent cyber attacks, false flags. is there any way sanctions, even the tougher sanctions that are supposed to come later this afternoon, any sanctions would deter him? >> in a word, no. there's nothing about the history of sanctions to ask them to do that kind of lift. sanctions can be coersive. and pressure people to do things they're reluctant to do and they can be puntive and penalize things. we hope they're coursive.

but more likely they're going to be punitive and not going to fundamentally alter whatever course mr. putin is setting for himself. i'm afraid the course is something on the scale of an all-out invasion, certainly the remove of this government. >> you wrote a column earlier this week about whether there were some cracks in the support of russia for vladimir putin, even within his own ministries. we know he's not consulting, certainly not with foreign minister, lavrov and as far as we know only with one of the defense ministers. so, how isolated is he? and is he listening to some of the people? >> so, andrea, i think the evidence is the isolation that was already present since the covid pandemic began, he's seen so few people from what i am told.

people communicate with him on landlines. they're in another room in the kremlin. they don't even enter his space. that's increased further. i don't mean to overstate the degree of descent within the kremlin. this this is a one-man authoritarian regime, and putin will do what he wants, but even on live russian television, you can see uneasies in among his top advisers, including sergei nureshenkin, when he disagreed with putin about the wisdom of recognizing the independent enclaves in, and putin -- it was quite a show. i think the ice lane that putin in a sense should worry, as leaders out of touch with their own advisers, who don't hear the

corrective advice, the warnings that we're told have been made by people in the russian military were uncomfortable with what they're being asked to do here, especially if it goes to an all-out invasion of ukraine and occupation, which would be a bloody mess for russia. so very hard, obviously, for anyone to know what's going on inside these decision circles, but there is some evidence with disagreement with ma putin has done. >> then there's always china, richard. we saw, of course, at the opening ceremonies at beijing, this new accord between beijing and moscow, but then we heard from the foreign minister of china, reassertion about the importance of sovereignty, and other countries not interfering with sovereign nations. china has never recognize the crimea, for instance, as being held by russia. where do you think china is on this?

it's a pretty big decision, trying for diplomatic solutions in the -- >> i don't speak mandarin, but somewhere there's got to be a word for really uncomfortable. china obviously wants to stay close to mr. putin's useful energy source. there's an authoritarian brotherhood here. both of them want to undoing important parts of the u.s. world order, but -- and it's a big but, china doesn't want the world to fall into a real disarray. they have important economic interests in ukraine, important economic interests in europe, obviously with the united states and asia, it's worried about being caught up in u.s. sanctions. it could force chinese for difficult choices. they also don't like the idea of recognition of parts of countries. what would happen if countries started recognizing taiwan as independence independent, so china is caught here about how

to provide the degree of support for mr. putin, to not go in lockstep with him. in my estimate, they're looking for tactical adjustment as this playing out. speaking of, as this plays out, to both of us, courtney reporting from the pentagon, we've been saying all the intelligence we've been tracking through other sources is he was preparing for a large-scale invasion. now the reporting is russia is as really as they can be, 80% in forward positions ready to go. they range from 5 kilometers from the border to 50. they are literally ready. they have profit in nearly 100% of all of the forces that we anticipated he would need for a large-scale invasion. russia has more than ten landing ships in the black sea, with troops on board. putin has everything for a large-scale invasion, and the belief is, as we've been

reporting in this hour, that that is vladimir putin's intention. david? >> well, we're at the edge of what could be a bloody war, a level of violence that we just haven't seen certain in europe, watching the social myia footage of the weapons the russians are moving toward the border, the rocket mobile launchers, the armored vehicles one after the other, dozens, hundreds. the level of firepower being brought to bear on this country, which will fight alone, is just stunning. >> wow. we can all hope and pray that whatever does come down is, at least, less brutal than we anticipate and the ukrainians are somehow better prepared than last time, which they seem to have. thank you, richard haus, david

ignatius, on this ominous morning for ukraine and the world. covid cases are coming down. when will the cdc say masks can come off, too? this is "andrea mitchell reports" on msnbc. "andrea mitchl reports" on msnbc.

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if you stick to the significantened high trabz mission metric they were using, the whole map was red for a long period of time, and it didn't really reflect what was going on on the ground, where we were seeing less hospitalizations, so i think we have to think about looking at severity. icu bed occupancy to engage health recommendations. i think that's a good thing. it signifies we're getting to a better level of control. >> we do include children, where they cannot be vax fwhalted. i know many parents are really stressed out over this.

>> so the best way to protect the less than 5-year-olds, is to get everyone else vaccinated around them. they are spared from severe consequences of disease, but there are some that can get severe infections. for those individuals, it comes down to risk tolerance. if it's a healthy child, unlikely to have any major problems with covid-19. a child with asthma, maybe more judicious with rapt tests, and one-way masks for words, and if you're uncomfortable, ask people to wear masks, but we have to get comfortable this becomes more of a personal choice issue. >> would you go into a gathering of unmasked people in your community? >> i would. i'm fundamentally vaccinated. i'm not worried about severe disease. i'm pretty comfortable with my ability to risk calculate. i wouldn't have a problem.

i've already been around unmasked individuals. >> when we go forward with the cdc guidance, do you it would be hard -- if there's another variant, how do we get people back into these restrictions. >> i think it's unlikely we'll see any other variant cause problems in our hospitals. to me that's the public health guidance that needs to be premised on. making sure hospitals can perform their duties. not worry about staffing or bed capacity. so any other variant, yes, it may cause indications and disruption, but i don't think it will have the same ability to crush hospitals the way delta and omicron could do. we may see it less of a centralize the recommendation, but more about individual risk tolerance. you have to remember we have tools that we didn't have early on. >> dr. amish, as always, thank

you so much. that does it for this edition. remember, follow us online on facebook and on twitter. chuck todd with "immediate the press daily" starts right now. if it's wednesday, the war escalates, cyberattacks hit ukraine's government and financial institutions, as the country braces for an all-out conflict, declaring a state of emergency, warning its citizens to leave russia now, this as lawmakers and diplomats here in the united states race to confront this crisis. we've have an air force veteran, who was recently in ukraine, as a sitting member of congress. and new opportunities to rebuke president biden over this handling of this crisis, as party leaders look to cast blame on biden for putin's invasion of ukraine.