we are coming on the air at 3:00 eastern here in washington, 10:00 at night in kyiv with continuing breaking news coverage of what is now an all-out war in europe. this hour we have white house press secretary jen psaki set to brief reporters for the first time since we heard about the tough new sanctions from president biden targeting some of russia's biggest banks close to vladimir putin. u.s. troops in europe after that overnight attack on ukraine by russian forces. >> putin's aggression against ukraine will end up costing russia dearly economically and strategically. we will make sure of that. >> right now in ukraine a new curfew is just going into effect in kyiv. you're looking at it live on your screen right now like i said. couple hours from midnight there with multiple u.s. sources

telling us russia has launched more than 100 short and medium-range missiles into ukraine after captuing and plans to target facilities next many in cities where a whole lot of people live. i'm hallie jackson in washington and we have a lot as we continue juggling coverage of this crisis. kristen welker at the white house, kerr simmons live for us in moscow and a former spokesperson for the mission to the u.n. is joining us, as well. matt bradley, you are on the ground. you are in ukraine. i know you have been up for hours watching all of this unfold. we now have this new information from president biden. talk to me about the reaction on the ground to the sanctions there and the confirmation that we've just gotten from ukrainian officials that russian forces have, indeed, captured the area. >> as for chernobyl.

it's a wasteland. historically significant but so close to kyiv and that's the real issue. a spring board to kyiv. not strategic in any other sense. you ask the questions about the sanctions. dmitri tweeted just today when it comes to sanctions, this is not just about money. this is about the innocent lives of ukrainian men, women and children. he made an impassioned plea on twitter to remove russia and vladimir putin from s.w.i.f.t. we heard joe biden saying his sanctions regime is more powerful than removing from s.w.i.f.t. the banking system, that was always seen as the nuclear option. and that really is throwing the whole kitchen sink into this and getting, you know, the biggest move. something that would be really difficult to operate for russia financially. but, you know, i think that the

ukrainians will be really disappointed because their whole argument the whole time for the past several weeks is why wait for war to impose these sanctions? why not start imposing the sanctions now, now being a couple weeks ago when vladimir putin was arranging his soldiers, mustering them all around the borders. why not punish him then? the argument was from washington, of course, we don't want to sanction putin and mouse cow too much because we want to have some of our weapons in reserve. and the fact of the matter is that the foreign minister, he just said, you know, that no sanctions are actually ever going to be enough. what we need to do is remove putin and his army from ukraine. sanctions are an imperfect weapon. they always will be and ukrainian government recognizes this but still they were hoping for more and they will be disappointed. hallie. >> kristen, let me go to you on this because president biden made clear why he was taking this step now and not earlier.

another tool in the arsenal. he was clear that he believes and we're going to talk about this more later that the sanctions he announced are tougher than cutting russia out of the swift banking system. he was clear about that in his news conference but there is another tool he could use and that is sanctioning putin personally which he says is still on the table. >> i thought it was interesting, hallie, because we really heard from the president for first time about the disagreements among the united states, european allies about kicking russia out of s.w.i.f.t. banking system. there is a robust campaign by ukraine, frankly by a number of lawmakers on capitol hill. republicans and democrats, as well, who say what are you waiting for? take the strongest action right now. the president's answer to that was because there is this disagreement. of course, europe's economies are more intertwined with russia's economy and so there is real concern, the president said among some of those allies about

kicking russia out of s.w.i.f.t. peter alexander pressed the president on this very question, though. let's take a lookt a that exchange. >> respectfully, sir, what more are you waiting for? >> specifically the sanctions we have imposed exceed s.w.i.f.t. the sanctions we imposed exceed anything that has ever been done. the sanctions we imposed have generated two-thirds of the world joining us. they are profound sanctions. let's have a conversation in another month or so to see if they're working. >> hallie, just to recap the sanctions he's talking about, the new sanctions that the president announced today include sanctioning more of russia's largest banks. they also include sanctioning russia's export industry, as well as more elites, close to vladimir putin. all of this will have an impact on putin. you're right, the other tool in his tool box is to sanction putin himself. he said he's not taking that off the table.

it's a complicated thing to do. we're getting reaction from lawmakers, hallie. we heard from adam schiff who said in the last hour that he supports going further even though we don't sanction heads of state sometimes we do. i think it's narted here. he wants to see the steps the president take including kicking russia out of s.w.i.f.t. and we heard from virginia fox who said that the president showed other weakness. so, the president today defending his strategy and defiant but still getting pressure to go even further, hallie. >> what is your anticipation of what we may see or hear from putin tonight? >> we heard from putin earlier today and it is quite interesting because he spoke to business leaders here in moscow just a few hours before we heard from president biden. one thing he said to the business leaders is that russia

remains part of the global economy. we're not going to damage the system of the world economy in which we, ourselves, exist. once again, you saw a confident, determined president putin turning his business leaders, it's okay, not thrown out in the world economy. a few hours later you hear president biden whether be removed from the s.w.i.f.t. payment system and president biden indicating an issue with the europeans. when kristen says europe is more economically intertwined with russia, no kidding. the u.s. has right around $35 billion worth of trades with russia. china about right about $150 billion. europe $250 billion worth of trades with russia. so, this is kind of roughly very simply how the system works. the system is kind of american, s.w.i.f.t. is american, dollar-based system. but the majority of the trade is

european and kind of ironic, of course, though, that it is a war in europe and the europeans having to be persuaded and take such drastic action. >> we're talking about the s.w.i.f.t. system and russia has over the last several years developed its own alternative, if you will, part of why president biden made that declaration that he believes this is going to be extremely tough against putin and tougher than acting on s.w.i.f.t. is that an accurate assessment based on your many years of experience with sanctions and in this sort of field? >> so, listen, s.w.i.f.t. is a tough move, cutting them out of s.w.i.f.t. is a tough move. what ends up happening you reserve that for countries like syria and countries like iran where you are completely cutting them off and you have made the decision you want no financial movements or transactions between you and that country. right. that doesn't seem to make a lot of sense for a lot of reasons, for the reasons spelled out because of the ongoing trade

between the united states and russia and europe and russia. as to which is stronger, it's hard to say. but because it's hard to measure because of the backlash that you would have from isolating russia from s.w.i.f.t. the sanctions that have been announced today are very tough. when people think of sanctions, they shouldn't think of the actual measure taken. what i mean is when the united states sanctioned today vtb bank, yes, assets in the united states is frozen and u.s. cannot do business with that target any more but what it does is unleash market forces and financial institutions and banks and businesses around the world that aren't in jurisdictions that sanctions will question whether they want to do business with them. they'll question whether they want to take capital outflows. so, market sources are unleashed and around the world you see this effort because they prefer to maintain relationships with new york. because they prefer to do

business in the dollar, which is currently the strongest currency around the world and they end up kind of taking sides. we saw this play out over and over again. you've seen it with iran and a number of times. so, at the end of the day, what president biden did was very strong but relying on them, the public relying on them to change putin's calculus right now, it's just not going to happen. president biden said that today in his press conference. >> thank you. kristen welker, matt bradley, keir simmons, i know you'll be on later. democrat from virginia and chair of the senate intelligence committee. senator, thank you for being on with us, back on the show this afternoon. >> thank you. >> a lot to get to. let me start and pick up on the conversation that we were having on sanctions. do you believe president biden has made the right move here and would you support going further by sanctioning s.w.i.f.t. or putin himself? >> well, i would keep both on the table.

remember, s.w.i.f.t. is actually a european institution. so, unless we do that sanctioning through s.w.i.f.t. in conjunction with our european allies, which we did, for example, vi-a-vis iran, this coalition that we've taken months to build could start to rattle before we fully bring the hammer down. just to put this in some perspective. america does roughly $28 billion a year in trade. europe does about 300. so, the economic hit that europeans will take with taking rush out of it are greater. i think europeans are open to that. i think we've seen this joint movement along. i remember my republican colleagues were asking sanction nord stream and germans finally move and americans move and much more effective. i think we need to keep s.w.i.f.t. on the table and keep sanction putin on the table.

i'm not sure either one of those in the next 48 hours are going to change putin's behavior. and i think there's a lot more challenge. i know we may get in this conversation, but some immediate short-term challenges we got as well as challenges over the next few days. >> i want to get to cyber? are you satisfied with what you've seen from the president so far? >> i'm satisfied we have taken an alliance that was pretty broken a year ago and still relatively broken four months ago and we we've got not only nato working together, but japan, south korea, australia and countries around the world are calling out putin's aggression. a lot of that is due to the spot-on intelligence of the american intelligence community with our allies where we in a sense laid out ahead of these russian actions, you know, the idea that a few weeks ago the russians might stage a coup in ukraine or put out videos with dead bodies that would have been russian formulated. i think that's taken away even any pretense that putin had that

this is anything other than naked aggression against the people of ukraine and slap of democracies around the world. >> so, senator, what is putin's plan in kyiv? >> well, my assessment is the same as the american inteliance community. this was always going to be beyond a military action in the east. it was going to be in aimed taking out the ukrainian military and government. they said demilleterization and we have been warning that for some time. i was at the munich security conference last week and i think some of our european friends were naively thinking he would not move forward. he has. i think they will try to eliminate the government and eliminate the military. i think one of the most powerful tools we have against, maybe not short-term stopping the russian military, but longer term paying the price and making sure that

ukrainian insurgency, those people who have in been training have the tools they need and also that the ukrainian public can still film real time and get videos on your channel and others around the world. one of the reasons why i'm also concerned about the potential of launching both in terms of taking count their internet which would get rid of the images and also the very real possibility that a massive russian cyberattack against ukraine, for example, shutting down all the power could result in literally shutting down power in poland, a nato nation, where our troops are right now or shutting down the power in the eastern part of poland and suddenly you get into a gray area of potential article five violations where if a nation is attack the rest of the nation has to come to their assistance. >> do you believe that vladimir putin is ready to conduct such a serious attack based on what you know? >> hallie, so far he has not

launched that. but if the ukrainian resistance strengthens for a few days, i think this putin, obviously, 190,000 troops. he doesn't care about ukrainian losses. i think he will enter kyiv and not simply incircle it. the notion that he would launch a major cyberattack and the challenge with cyber as some of your viewers probably know is once you let that malware into the wild, into these networks, you don't know where it will end. it doesn't respect geographic boundaries. matter of fact, five years ago russia launched a major cyber attack against ukraine and ended up costing billions of dollars of damages across america and europe. cost billions of dollars in russia and that was just with one cyber tool. russia has literally hundreds if not thousands of cyber weapons they could unleash along this. we're entering into a very gray area and also think about this cyber repercussions when we put the sanctions in place with the

west and others and putin will more directly start to attack using cyber tools against the west or potentially more likely letting all the cyber criminals who operate out of russia with ramson ware attacks unleashing us, as well. >> senator, you said you don't believe putin will go in, simply encircle kyiv and you think he will install his own government? >> you have to believe what he said. he wants to demilitarize and his terminology, denazify where you have frankly a jewish president of ukraine in mr. zelenskyy. this guy is on his own personal to restore greater russia and he is not only a threat to ukraine, but a threat to nations around. and it's one of the reasons why we are much stronger as we do

this in concert, not only with our nato allies, but other nations around the world. the only person that i heard in the last 48, 72 hours actually defending putin is the former president of the united states. on the other hand, i'm glad to see president bush and the vast majority of my colleagues republicans and democrats alike stand together and say we're standing with the people of ukraine and calling out putin's outrageous behavior and say he has to pay the price. there is that exception and just stunning to me. >> what kind of resistance are you seeing and are you hearing about from the ukrainian defense forces? >> well, i was disappointed that the ukrainian defense, the ukrainian president didn't further mobilize his reserves. we've been urging him to do that for weeks. i understand, as well, that this country and i met with a lot of ukrainians in munich last week and this idea that war is going

to start every day and how do you live their life? do you send your kid to school? the reports are the ukrainians are resisting. at what level and in what kind of organization. the reporting is still very spotty. and i hope to have more information by late tonight. >> what is your understanding of president zelenskyy and any potential exit plan out of the country if putin does do what you fear he may do? >> i think a week ago the sense was the ukrainian government might move to leave in the far western part of ukraine where our diplomats and other nation diplomats have already moved. whether the russian forces will or some sense start and stop around kyiv and split the country two-thirds by russia and one-third western ukraine where russians are even more unpopular. but we're seeing, well not direct attacks but seeing

attacks to the west of kyiv in cities around ukraine. so, russia's appetite for territory may have grown in the sense of where putin is headed. but this is, again, playing out realtime in front of all of our eyes. i think the necessity of making these images and making sure the ukrainian people can film these tragedies is really important to keep the pressure on putin. frankly, i hope some of these images are being broadcast to the russian people, as well. >> we only have about 30 seconds left, senator. as i know you have a tight schedule. you have been getting regular briefings from the intelligence community. i know you will not reveal intelligence, but right now what is your biggest concern based on that? >> well, my concern is that particularly within the cyber domain. we're entering unchartered area. cyber escalation a reason our country said if we get attacked

by cyber, we may respond another domain. you get into an area where even the experts don't know the full ramifications. >> senator mark warner, i'm grateful for your time on what has been a long day and a long night for you. we hope to see you again on the show, senator. get an update this hour. you see the podium. take you there live when that briefing starts. first, news from the faa which is now expanding its no-fly zone. we'll tell you where. and then later global markets tanking today. we'll get an update from wall street just before the closing bell. stay with us. just before the cg bell stay with us

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conflict over your crane but the faa is expanding the no-fly zone over ukraine. now, you may recall the faa imposed a no-fly zone over eastern ukraine following the shoot down of the malaysian airline flight. the entire country of ukraine, this is new, belarus and 160 nautical miles into russia. now, you may recall another incident last year involving belarus, a flight that was diverted into belarus. the authorities took somebody off that plane and put him in prison. as a result of that, most airlines stopped flying over and into belarus. but now an official no-fly zone over belarus and over all of ukraine and 169 nautical miles into russia. that could impact mostly cargo flights transiting the area on a long haul cargo flight. very few americans are flying into belarus or ukraine these days and officially no fly except for military aircraft as they deem necessary. hallie.

>> tom costollo live for us with that reporting. thank you. we'll look for more of your reporting tonight on nbc "nightly news." one thing president biden talked about was movement of troops. i am joined by former ambassador to russia, michael mcfall. ambassador mcfall, let me start with you. i want to hear your perspective on everything we've seen develop over the last 90 minutes. the sanctions and what we heard from president biden and the developments on the ground in ukraine. >> everything, hallie. you're going to give me 60 minutes to talk. >> i'll give you a couple, if that's okay with courtney and general zach here. >> all joking aside, this is one of the most tragic days in my life personally. i know a lot of people in ukraine are scared to death today. this is the largest war we had in europe for 70 years. and it's not over yet. we're just in the beginning stages of it. i appreciate the biden response

all the way up to this point. i think they've played very weak cards well, including what was announced today but i also think we need to be realistic. they're weak cards because of the asymmetry of what we're preaired to do and what putin is prepared to do in this war. >> do you believe, you talked about playing what you call weak cards. should president biden and the administration be playing a stronger card as it relates to, for example, sanctioning putin personally? >> you know, in the margins maybe. you know, i'd like to see on the list and hopefully with the european allies maybe s.w.i.f.t. will be on the list, as well these sanctions today are formidable. these are comprehensive sanctions and real cost on the russian financial sector. i know all the heads of the banks, by the way. these are people who like to travel and be integrated into the world. but i want to be clear about sanctions. i don't care what sanctions we

would put in place, we're going to be measuring their effectiveness not in days and weeks and months, but years. because russia is a dictatorship. the people being sanctioned can't go to the parliament and say, hey, wait a minute, mr. putin, we need to withdraw from this war. there's not going to be mass mobilization of people being sanctioned. although i do want to say i'm very struck by the demonstrations we've seen out of russia so far. and i've even participated with russians today and many, many people are against this war. we just don't have the economic leverage to change putin's calculus, at least not in the short run. >> talk to me more about the piece from russia itself. i want to ask what sanctions can do to putin's popularity in russia, which is something he, too, cares about to a degree. >> he cares about it and obsessed about public opinion numbers and i think over time this will erode those numbers. but it's a dictatorship.

so, so he loses popularity, so what. he doesn't face re-election and a real election and that's why sanctions in all countries all over the world always take a long time and there's a very clear correlation. the larger the country, the larger the economy, the less effective sanctions are. russia is one of the most largest economies ever sanctioned. i think it will take a long time before the russian people feel the effect, yet alone try to do something about it. >> ambassador mcfall, stand by for a moment. we talked about russia's capital of chernobyl. strategically or perhaps more importantly psychologically, why is that significant? >> thank you for bringing me on. it's good to see my former ambassador at work for moscow, sir. >> good to see you, general. >> the chernobyl thing is a data point, but that's history now. it's ugly.

the russians needed to go through that area to get down towards kyiv. i would say what should be an interesting data point is the largest nuclear reactor in europe is on the upper river, which potentially could be in the line of fire. i'll just throw that out. so in the overall significance, yeah, there's symbolism and many will say that chernobyl was one of the things that started to bring down gorbachev and made him change his mind for all that occurred there. but they've gone through that poisonous zone and they're in and around kyiv already. it's incredibly dangerous. and we don't know where this is going to head. once they get to kyiv, they've already got paratroopers and all in the area. that becomes a porcupine potentially for them. remember, we're just in the

first 20 hours of this and the laws of unintended consequences for all sides have not yet really emerged in this, regarding this absolutely horrific invasion. >> president biden made the point that largely putin is taking the steps that were, in many ways, anticipated by the united states. based on that, general, what do you see happening over the next, let's say, 24, 48 hours? what should we be anticipating as, you know, we talked it's now 10:30 at night in kyiv and as the night goes on into the dawn. >> number one, you know, in the big, big alliance aspect is keeping the alliance focused, which it is. there are troops being ready to bring over. not to fight the russians, but to assure and deter from the framework of the multiple nato allied countries in the area and partners. that's one.

two. my gut reflex when i heard this because this is beyond the pale this invasion. no matter what, there is no justification. was to kind of say, no, we have to go maximum on the sanction, no, i'm going to pull back and i'm going to trust the administration. we've been playing this hand very carefully and they have a strategic thing, objective also to keep europe together. europe is horrified by this. i'm going to pull back my initial impulse that sanctioned them and all and, last, i am against putting the talk about putting u.s. and nato boots on the ground, which will give, it will be like putting a red flag in front of the russian and given the justification to really, really get crazy. this is pretty crazy. so, i think now it's anaconda and sanctions stifling sanctions and political isolation and how

about just societial, just condemnation. if you're a russian, even if, this is really bad for the russian, for the russian brand and bad for business. so, you just make it really hard and do everything you can to support short of military intervention, supporting the ukrainian military with weapons and they need more than anything else right now more anti-tank and more short-range, if you will, antiaircraft-type weapons. >> so, courtney, let me go to you here on the movements of troops. president biden has made clear as he did again today. and he has reiterated this almost every time he talked about the crisis here. u.s. troops boots on the ground fighting russia directly not an option, not an option on the table. the troops are there to bolster nato allies. give us the view from the

pentagon at 3:33 this afternoon. there are some developments you are reporting on. >> that's right. one of them today we learned a that direction of the president lloyd austin has ordered 7,000 u.s. troops here in the united states to move forward to germany. so, as you said, hallie these are not troops going into ukraine to fight russia. in fact, they'll go to shore up or bolster the defenses of nato allies in the baltic region and particularly eastern europe. we don't know where beyond germany they may go and not clear if they could be used as the nato response force. we were talking about this, something that nato or specifically the north atlantic council would decide to activate. it's potentially tens of thousands of nato allied troops that would be used to help defend against a potential invasion or incursion of russia of some of those nato allies. now, there are still no u.s. intelligence anyway that russia has any plans to move beyond

ukraine, but this is really about showing a united front among these nato allies, especially now that russia has begun this full-scale invasion of ukraine. so, those 7,000 troops will move forward in the coming days. there is still no indication that nato has made a definitive decision about activating the nato response force, but i also have to say, hallie, in the last few minutes while you have been on the air an update of what is going on from a u.s. military perspective what they are seeing happen there in your crane. according to a senior defense official they believe russia has launched in excess of 160 missiles into ukraine since this invasion began about 9:30 p.m. eastern time last night. the senior defense official also says that russian forces are getting closer to kyiv. we know that they had been encircling the city, moving down both starting from the air with missile strikes, with air strikes, but they also did start moving down across the border from belarus around the chernobyl pocket, which we've

been talking about closer to isolating and encircling and isolating that city with, as a senior defense official said the ultimate goal of taking over the capital city of kyiv. in addition to that, now new reports according to the defense official of airborne operations into one of the major cities on the eastern side of ukraine. by airborne operations the russians are bringing russian troops in, parachuting them in with, again, the goal, according to this u.s. assessment to isolate that city and ultimately take it over, hallie. >> matt bradley is there, interesting to hear from him if we can get him back up live. this new reporting coming into us in the last couple minutes as we've been on the air and i think of what we heard from the senate of the intelligence committee and real concern of the possibility of what you're talking about here. putin is not going to stop at simply encircling kyiv. >> the assessment from the u.s.

military according to this defense official, putin's goal is to install a new governance. so, essentially, bring in a public government. we have been hearing in recent days that the russian government has already created a list of who they want to install a more russian friendly, you know, anti-west government there in kyiv. the concern for weeks now has been that they would try and do that by encircling, taking over the city and the defense official says they do assess that russia is trying to take over the capital city. no timeline, you know, there was an assessment we were reporting on a couple weeks ago that they could potentially even take the city within the first 48 hours after this initial launch of air strikes. it's not clear whether that is still on track for that timeline to hold, but we'll continue to ask that question. >> ambassador mcfall, i want to go to you here. as courtney was talking another piece of developmenting news and i want to be careful on this one for a reason i'll explain. a senior state official explaining to our team that the

u.s. has expelled the number two diplomat in washington. now that state department official is also clear to clarify this is not part of the response to what we are seeing from russia now. what is described as this premeditated invasion of ukraine, but part of more of the long-standing bilateral dispute between the u.s. and russia. i want to bring viewers that development and i also, ambassador mcfall, continue to be struck by the way that you characterized your thoughts on this at the beginning of our conversation that this is a tragic day for you personally. i know you are in conversation with your many friends and people that you talk to in the region. tell me more about where they are and how they're doing. >> so, two things i want to say about that. president putin in his ranting speech hour and ten minutes or so which i listened to very closely made it very clear what the goals are here. demilleterization. he wants to wipe out the ukrainian military and what he calls denazification but what that really means is to wipe out the government that came to

power first in 2014 and then when president zelenskyy was elected in a free and fair election in 2019. that means that's why they're going to kyiv. they're going to take him out. by the way, i would not be surprised, i'm just speculating here if he reinstalled the president of ukraine that was overthrown in 2014 from putin's perspective because what he's doing here is he wants to roll back what is called in ukraine the revolution of dignity from 2014. he's been obsessed with it ever since. he has wanted to seek retribution and finally, as he announced, very blunt about it by the way, if you listen to him. he said we waited too long. we're finally going after them. what that means for my friends, some of my friends were the ones that organized the revolution of dignity in 2014 and i've been in touch with several of them over

the last eight or ten hours and some are leaving to lviv and some decided that they're going to stay and fight to the end in their capital of kyiv. >> ambassador mcfall, general zwack, i'll ask your patience here. we're getting a lot of news developing and i want to bring it to viewers and bring a couple other people to the conversation. andrea mitchell and evelyn. courtney, i'll ask you to stay with us, too. obviously, if you have to go get on the phone, go do it. i know you're all doing that very actively at the moment. i want to update you on the latest numbers that are coming in to us on casualties from the ukrainian government. the minister of health there says 57 people have been killed in the country because of this invasion by russia. nearly 170 others have been hurt. these are the latest numbers that we have. we also understand that hospital and medical workers have come under fire and that there were some casualties among those medical workers, as well. this is according to the

ukrainian government. so, the crisis continues to escalate, andrea. i know you have been working your sources a that state department. bring us up to speed. >> well, one thing i think you may have just mentioned the fact that the u.s. expelled the number two or expelling the number two diplomat. they say it's unrelated and been in control of the timing. this is a long-standing dispute. russia acted against our diplomat last week. this is retaliation. it's not going to help the overall situation, but as you heard the president say, we have no relationship with russia right now. except we're still dealing with iran, but that's another whole issue. the other thing here is that the sanctions. the president saying that the sanctions were never intended to prevent him from acting. that is, that is the case that for at least a couple weeks they have been telling us based on the intelligence, their analysis that putin could not be deterred. that putin, i mean, they had been trying to decide whether this is ideological with him or the pragmatic putin and they

have decided in recent weeks that this is ideological. that he is committed to doing this. and that nothing they could do would stop him. because he wants to rewrite history. so, there is that push/pull on the sanctions. why are they sanctioning him? to punish him. to make him feel the pain so that perhaps he doesn't go as far as he would or keep this going as long as he would. but that is the basic intelligence analysis. so far the intelligence has been dead on, as you know. the sanctions themselves, according to several analysts i have talked to, are tough. they're not weak just because the s.w.i.f.t. was not done and, yes, the europeans blocked it and it's a european program based in brussels. so, without europe they couldn't do it. but what they have done with these banks is so tough and banning them from any kind of exchanges is they have done about as much as they can do.

tough as it could be. as tough as sanctions can be. now the point of the troops and courtney, perhaps, can give me some clarity on this. we have been confused on what is the north atlantic of nato doing. we thought a week and a half, two weeks ago once the handwriting was on the wall that they would have the 8,500 troops going to europe and had been on standby. why didn't they, you know, trigger the rapid, the nato rapid, the rapid response force and perhaps they did that today but it's not as clear cut as what we had expected. i had talked to former defense secretary, you know, bill cohen about it and he was also confused as to why this had not been done. it should have been done, he thought, already. so, what are they doing in terms of, you know, showing strength to vladimir putin right now? well, the sanctions, as tough as they are, you know, that is

somewhat in the eye of the beholder. but financial experts say they are pretty tough. and what are we doing with troops? we're moving them as close to the border to protect our nato allies as possible. moving these additional troops today to germany. as for the energy component, the saudis, our friends the saudis have said no. we're siding with russia. they're not going to help us by pumping more oil and one of the other reasons not to do, they've done the export, the u.s. today, the president did the export controls, which is, you know, they say in the long term significant but they did not hit the energy sector per se partly because that is playing into russia's hands. it would only raise the price of energy and give him a much bigger profit margin. >> andrea, you raised the nato question and courtney is working the phones and she tropdropped

our grid. evelyn, the summit that president talked about the 30 tomorrow to map out the next steps in this process. based on what you've seen, evelyn, what needs to be at the top of that list? >> i mean, at the top of that list, hallie, needs to be making sure that we can respond with, you know, more force than necessary, if russia dares to take a step into a nato ally territory. and why am i worried about this? because they put those new troops in belarus and they have this territory and they would love to create a corridor. they being the russian government, the kremlin, a corridor between belarus which would go through the baltic states. they would love to test nato and thereby show nato to be a paper. it's really important that we stand up to russia and, in fact, this is where the president was most firm in his address this afternoon. and rightfully so because

there's a lot of danger that this is going to spread throughout europe. i'm deeply troubled. we are having trouble, i guess, imagining the refugee flows. it's going to be worse than in the balkans, if you can remember back to the '90s those of us who were alive and i lived in bosnia in the aftermath of the war. it's going to be worse than that potentially. >> which is a dire thing to think about, evelyn. ambassador mcfall, general zwack, let me bring you back. court, i'll join you in a minute. if we could get andrea's question answered. there was a moment during the president's speech that turned into a news conference where he was asked directly if he's urging china to help isolate russia. i find that interesting that president biden stepped away from that question. he didn't say yes and he didn't say no and didn't knock it down. he just simply said i am not going to touch that. he said i'm not prepared to comment on that at the moment. ambassador mcfall, how do you read into that?

>> i was very struck by that comment, too, or the noncomment. i know that they are trying to work the chinese angle of this. they want to create some distance between and putin. these are two leaders that are very close and it's quite interesting to watch so far what the chinese reaction has been. on the one hand they talk about noninterference and nobody should use force against other countries and say they should support russia. they are trying to have their cake and eat it, too. if this wargos on and thousands of casualties, i think you said at the top of the hour we're up to 57. if we're starting to measure casualties in thousands and tens of thousands, a lot harder for the chinese to stand on the sidelines and pretend they're neutral in this conflict. i applaud the biden administration for doing that. they should be trying to peel away the chinese from their support for vladimir putin at this moment. >> general zwack, i want to hear

from you and flag to folks that we're now hearing from former president barack obama on the situation that is unfolding in ukraine and his statement i'll read a piece of it. people of conscious around the world need to loudly and clearly condemn russia's actions and offer support for the ukrainian people and every american regardless of party should support president biden's efforts in cooperation with our closest allies to impose hard-hitting sanctions on russia. general. >> yes, china. devilishly complex. yes, they're strategic partners and xi and putin have a real relationship. they met almost 40 times and they in normal linear way they could be in power for 12 more years. now, i don't know. this is, i think, my gut and i'm not -- this actually puts china in a very, very careful place. they, in the big picture, as autocrats support, if you will,

the russian positions generally, but i don't, i think this absolute overt invasion which they can't, russians can't call an intervention makes them uncomfortable for all the issues of sovereignty and all the issues that china are dealing with, as well. secondly, i think that it makes, while they don't want -- they're reluctant to being pulled in to support and there was an aspect of putin i believe in beijing two and a half weeks ago that was almost as a supplicate before all this goes. if he ever got into trouble. well, potentially, i believe they're going to get into trouble long range. now what do they do? do the chinese get uncomfortable if their strategic partner gets into trouble in many ways diplomatically, economically, resource wise helps cover china's flank and vice versa. now what does china do? is this an opportunity?

do they create a second front in the far east, which would be a huge, gigantic for everybody in the world or do they try to work away to pull russia back from the brink? it's devilishly complex and potentially quite dangerous. da >> courtney, andrea asked a question about -- clarification on nato troop deployments. do you have a clarification for us? >> andrea is right and started when president biden talked about he made it sound as if this additional troop deployment is for the nato response force but nato met specifically nato atlantic council met this morning and had a readout not talking about it being activated and defense officials have said there's no response that the force the activated and the

7,000 troops coming from fort carson in colorado were already ready to go. they were on sort of a high state of readiness to deploy forward. they will go to germany if the nato response force is activated. plus others. somewhere in the neighborhood of 8,500. this is 7,000 total. it's not really clear. at this point the response force has not been activated and hearing for some weeks now once there's a large scale invasion that there's a decent chance that nato will activate it. >> there's so much to unpack but what i would say is we really need to be looking at what we can do to protect the ukrainian

government. bring them to exile and worried about that piece of this. really the refugee flows. and making sure this doesn't spill over. >> we'll talk about the potential on the refugee flows in a minute. thank you so much for bringing up that point and thank you, evelyn and courtney and andrea. i appreciate you being with us. we have news on capitol hill. house speaker nancy pelosi announcing a briefing from the biden administration briefing. i want to bring in senior correspondent garrett haake. the briefing process is not impossible but adds a layer of complexity to that. >> reporter: with lawmakers scattered it is difficult to get quality information to them, classified briefings.

so lawmakers are in many cases left to look at the same information we are and making judgments and statements and next steps. >> we expected briefings tonight. mark warner expects more information. there's a lot of communication back and forth. >> reporter: yeah. i think pelosi's statement today largely lines up with yesterday. they met with many allies. they were now back. what we are seeing and in the aftermath of the president's speech members are supportive of ukraine but the prescriptions how best to do that is really varied. pelosi's statement lacks specifics of plans but we have

heard from republicans saying that sanctioning putin should be done immediately and building up energy independence to increase the leverage we have opinion putin to put strong sanctions in place without blowing back on european allies and then ideas on the democratic side like closing russian embassies or kicking out russian students in this country. what more needs to be done is an open question. >> you were working the phones, too. thank you very much. you are about to see ukrainians trying to get out of the country fast. taking cash from atms. you can see stuck in long lines. trying to find a way to get out. there in the middle of a military action in europe since the second world war. civilians are fleeing and lives

and infrastructure must be protected at all times in line with international humanitarian lives. about 5 million refugees out of ukraine in this invasion. u.s. officials projecting the death toll to reach 50 nouz. "the new york times" saying united nations is appealing to raise $190 million. 9% is raised. i want to bring in david milleband. thank you for being with us. >> of course. >> ukrainians trying to get to poland or other countries. what is your sense as of this afternoon as to what's happening on the ground? >> the numbers are in the thousands and great danger is

obviously hundreds of thousands or more. at the moment we are only in the 12th or 15th hour of this and there's confusion and shock. we had a team in poland recently looking at the situation there. a major border there. they will open the border but they fear that the numbers are overwhelming. much greater than the 1990s and the balkans. >> your organization said it would mobilize resources to assist those vulnerable and displaced. how urgent are the next 24 to 48 hours? >> i think we will have to measure this in months and not hours. people want to see what's the way in which the fighting takes place. we don't know if this is a prolonged war or occupation.

those are the only two dark options that are on the table. i think it's very important that the clarity of the international calls or respect for law continues. it's very important there's documentation of any war crimes that take place and the targeting of civilians and vital that the unity exists in europe is sustained. at the moment it is a military and -- >> you mentioned a moment ago poland, slovakia welcoming in your view some of these refugees. are you confident that that welcome will continue on? >> not yet. but obviously this is a fast moving situation. it is striking that the european union 27 countries fully united in the measures they have taken so far. there's a long history that is stirring in europe and very, very worrying.

i think the polish side of this is especially challenging but been clear about the danger that the russian incursion, invasion represents and so i think that the moment the issue is how's this going to play outside inside ukraine? i want to emphasize to people it is not just organizations in poland or slovakia that's important. what's the future for people that flee and remain inside their own country is important. there's civil society organizations. human taryn organizations inside ukraine and want to partner with them. >> what is your most urgent concern at the moment? >> two very, very bleak options. a long war or long occupation. none of them end well and a concern which i have to flank to you. this is happening at a time of unbelievable global crisis in other contexts a real fear with

the world's attentions switching rightly to ukraine there are tens of millions of people on the brink in afghanistan and yemen and the world has got to be able to walk and chew gum and frankly play the violin at the same time. we have to deal with this and pending the problems at source. >> david, so grateful for your time and want to note to help david's group, other organizations go to rescue.org/ukraine. in the last 35 seconds or so on the air there we have heard from vice president harris delivering remarks. essentially saying that she wants to be clear about what we know and believe is a war of choice in her words.

the biden administration presenting a united front on russian aggression. i'll see you at nbc news now and for now "deadline: white house" picks up our special coverage. ♪♪ hi there, everyone. 4:00 in new york on a historic day with war inup on a scale not seen since world war ii. now 18 hours into a sweeping assault on ukraine. the president zelenskyy said the country is under attack from the north, south, east and the air. official telling nbc news the putin goal is nothing short of decapitating the ukrainian government. air strikes on the mill tash and ash defenses accor