hunker down and face the attacks rather than move everyone. an incredible difficult situation for so many still there in ukraine. >> the very real cost of war. it's so good to know, but it's good to hear they'll get home soon. you know they'd go it again if they had to to have that beautiful baby. we could get the supreme court decisions including on key issues like guns and abortion. i'm chris jansing. jose diaz-balart picks up breaking news coverage right now. good morning, 10:00 a.m. eastern, 7:00 a.m. pacific. we begin this busy morning with russia intensifying in ukraine. russia and ukraine meet for another round of talks about the belarus border. the humanitarian crisis in ukraine is growing. we'll bring you live reports from ukraine, russia and poland. we'll talk to a former member of

the ukrainian parliament about the desperate reality people are facing there. meanwhile back in washington, the house judiciary and jilgt committee alleges in a new court filing that former president trump was part of a criminal conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election. we'll bring you the latest from our nation's capitol. we begin with the latest on the russian invasion of ukraine which is now in its second week. russian forces continue to focus on four key cities, kyiv, kharkiv, mayor open poll. there are conflicting reports on who is in control of kherson. russian troops are in the city and ukrainian troops have left, but ukrainian officials say the battles continue there and claim

russian forces are looting kherson. ukraine's president is giving an upbeat description. he banded russian children as, quote, children being used. ukraine's foreign minister tweeted about reports that russian soldiers may launch an attack near a russian town near the border and accuse ukraine of carrying it out. the humanitarian crisis created by the conflict is getting worse. the united nations refugee agency says at least 1 million ukrainians have fled to neighboring countries and millions more could soon join them. this is another round of talks between ukraine and russia, aimed at ending the eight-day-old conflict are now under way in belarus. right now, president biden hold ag video conference with leaders of australia, india and japan to discuss the situation and how it could affect the asia-pacific region as the administration asks congress for an additional

$10 billion in humanitarian and defense assistance for ukraine. "the economist" chose this powerful image for the cover of its next edition. with me nbc news senior national correspondent tom llamas, correspondent ellison barber along the ukraine border. tom, how are things where you are? >> reporter: we were at a check point. there's no fighting where we are. the reminders of war are everywhere. just behind me, that metal structure, that's called a hedgehog. they have those to slow down any type of vehicles and possibly russian military vehicles if they come in. this checkpoint, they're looking for any russian ab tour, russian spy. not every car gets stopped, but some do. they want to go through the trunks and make sure there's no weapons inside. this area, obviously they're doing this to protect the citizens. so many refugees here, hundreds

of thousands of them. this is one of the last jumping off points before you get to the border. they want to make sure people are safe here once the fighting reaches this point. spent a lot of time speaking to refugees, and i am noticing a difference here, jose. there seems to be two types. there are the refugees who left right when the bombing started and they're making that perilous journey out to different countries like poland and slovakia and hungary, and then the refugees who stayed and have been bombed night after night. when you speak to these refugees where i did at a baptist seminary in lviv, they talk about the night the bombs fell and it's almost like they can't believe what they fell. they also have a lot of guilt. they left loved ones. not everyone could jump on the train or get in the car. it's been incredibly difficult. people are getting out, about a million so far. the u.n. estimates it will be 4 million. i can tell you that number is

probably going to be higher than that. there's so many people waiting in the queues. >> i'm seeing barriers of sandbags put up so a vehicle can't go straight, but actually has to zigzag. where is it that these vehicles behind you are heading? is that you're seeing somewhere throughout the city of lviv, these barriers? >> reporter: look, they haven't spread all over western ukraine. the towns and cities need to set up these checkpoints because it's the first line of defense. jose, there's stuff you see here and stuff you don't see. there's stuff that's hidden here. the sort of civilian -- armed civilians that run these checkpoints along with the help of the military remind you. they say, listen, there's stuff that you don't know that's hidden around here in case things get a little serious. they need these things because they don't know who is coming in and who is going out. life in lviv is still very much -- i don't want to say normal, but some shops are open,

the lines are long at the atms. everyone is waiting for the war and trying to help the hundreds of thousands of refugees. i spent time with the mayor of lviv and he said they'll take up arms. he said even his wife will take up arms as well. >> ellison, roughly half of the people that fled ukraine are going to poland. you've spoken to people who have been able to cross the border. what are they telling you? >> reporter: this is the fourth border crossing, and everywhere we go we see people like you see here, many women with young children who have been forced to leave their homes, grabbing one or two bag, whatever they can and making their way across the border. this right over here, we've seen police helping people. this group they've come from kyiv. police putting them into this van to then take them to a center more in town where they

can get warm, for many of them, have one of the first warm meals they've had in days and try and figure out where they go from here. if you walk a little more this way, most of this stuff set up, the food, the fires, this has all been set up by local groups, local pols who wanted to come and help. as we've spoken to people, tom touched on them. many of them will stay calm, strong, talk to you about the bombs, about the shelling, about what they survived. where they break down is when they talk about the people they had to leave behind. it is brothers, it is fathers, it is sons. they are terrified because they do no know if they will see them again. we met one boy, just a sophomore in high school, a tenth grader. he talked to us about leaving his father behind. listen to what he told us.

>> my dad, my cat and my grandparents stayed home. >> is your dad going to fight? >> he said he's -- he is going to fight if the russians will get to lviv, he's going fight. >> does that scare you? >> of course. i have a brother. he isn't in ukraine right now, but he wants to go to ukraine and fight. it gets scary. >> reporter: when you think about the numbers we are hearing, 1 million people fleeing ukraine in seven days, that is staggering. you look back at syrup yeah. that conflict when it started in 2011, it was 2013 when the un said a million people had fled veer yeah. in venezuela back in 2014 there was a time if i'm not mistaken

when the u.n. talked about how a million people had fled venezuela in a seven-month period. obviously the circumstances around those things, different factors at play. all the neighboring countries saying we'll allow you to come in. poland said people can come in without the traditional mandatory documents. that hasn't happened in every situation, but when you think about the numbers, 1 million people in seven days, that is staggering, and pols are doing their pest to try and help people. you look at a city like warsaw, jose, they said yesterday there are about 3,500 people that came into that city. the government had officially set aside 600 beds. it is not enough. when you see these numbers continue to climb, they need more help. >> ellison barber and tom llamas, thank you so much. joining me is a former

member of the ukrainian parliament who had to escape kyiv. now in western ukraine near the ukrainian border. thank you for being with us. what can you tell us about what you've gone through this last week? >> well, i left my home behind and i don't know when i'm going to come back. it's really devastating, but i think it's even more devastating for millions of people. you just showed those videos of people leaving with a couple of bags and this is everything they have, from the normality, their normal life, and also people are dying, people are being killed. we have around 3,000 civilians killed and more than 20 children killed already within these seven days. it's unreconcilable. your mind cannot absorb that kind of information that only a week ago we were just a peaceful

and prosperous and normal country, have millions of tourists come to just spend vacation in ukraine, but today we are an epicenter of a human tragedy and misery that every part of the world is looking at. >> svitlana, is there something you think the west could be doing further towards russia or even helping the ukrainian people? >> yes, it is extremely important to understand. they say first hundreds of casualties is a tragedy, and then it's statistic. there is a sad kind of saying. so what i'm trying to say that presently i expect these attacks to be intensified by putin. why? he hoped that he will win this war within a couple of days, that he will conquer kyiv within

days, but he is losing. he's losing in ukraine because he met an amazing resistance. he's losing on the international level because the international community united as never before and demonstrated a very strong response. and also, what is more important, he's losing inside his country. there are signs, first public servants leaving their positions and some oligarchs around putin are making statements that they will support ukraine and demand to stop the war. putin is getting even more mad. they started to close some media outlets, one of the most popular radios in russia. they wrote a letter to google that they prohibit them to spread videos and pictures and calling them war. so putin is afraid that he will

meet this resistance among his own population. but it also makes him even more dangerous. it demands from us from the international community to mobilize ourself for, first of all, more escalation, but secondly, a longer fight. >> just this morning russia's foreign minister lavrov said moscow was preparing to continue its military operation until the end. those two words, "the end." svitlana, what do you want us to know about the ukrainians? >> ukraine is a very courageous nation. seven days ago we were polarized with our different political preferences and what we thought about this and that and we speak different languages. we have a lot of people speaking the russian language. myself, both languages, russian and ukrainian.

maternal language for me, my grandma is from russia originally. my mother who used to be a teacher of russian language. but what is most important, its identity today -- ukraine shows its identity. we would like to be a democracy. we would like to be a country where -- having rule of law and justice and fight corruption. this is our choice. by the way, that's why putin is so much afraid, is so threatened with ukrainian country, ukrainian state at his border because this democracy threatens him with a coup d'etat or revolution with an international criminal. yes, we are courageous, we will defend our country, but we definitely need your support as

an international community, but it's an assault, it's an invasion, not only in ukraine. it's an invasion of the democracy. >> svitlana, thank you so much for being with us this morning. all the best. >> thank you. after the break, we'll hear from our pete williams on new supreme court decisions that came down just a few minutes ago. still ahead, could russia's wealthy oligarchs be the ones to stop putin? how does the doj squeezing russian billionaires have anything to do with it? the january 6th committee says former president trump's attempt to overturn the 2020 election may have been criminal. the new developments next. you're watching "jose diaz-balart reports." -denied. -can you imagine? i want a new nickname.

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breaking news. the supreme court has issued two new decisions. let's get right to nbc news justice correspondent pete williams. >> jose, good morning. the first one involves abortion, but it's really about who gets to decide whether the law should be defended in court. this was a kentucky law signed by the governor in 2018 that would ban a surgical procedure that's commonly used in the second trimester. it was immediately challenged in court. a federal judge declared it unconstitutional, and the state appeals it. but an appeals court also said it's unconstitutional. then there was a change in who's

in charge in kentucky. the democrat governor took over and decided the state would no longer seek to defend the law. the newly elected republican attorney general wanted to defend the law. the courts initiallily said no, they couldn't do that, that the state had had its chance and decided not to pursue the people. only justice sonia sotomayor deskrepding, the supreme court said no, that's not the way it works. the mere fact that he gets to do this doesn't mean he's going to succeed. he first has to ask the full appeals court whether it's going to take the kaechlts that's the first hurdle. secondly, he has to try to win in the appeals court. that's all very much up in the air, depending, jose, on what the supreme court ultimately does with the right to abortion. we're still waiting for the decision in the big case in mississippi on roe v. wade. he probably won't be getting

that for another month or so. the second case involves a guantanamo bay long-time detainee who was originally picked up on the battlefield and thought to be a top al qaeda leader. that turned out not to be true. at the time he was subject to extreme interrogation. his lawyers say he was tortured at a black site, a site in some other country which he says is poland. he wanted access to two cia contractors who were involved in his interrogation for a lawsuit being filed on his behalf in poland. the justice department under both republican and democratic administrations has said, no, he can't have that information, that is a state secret, where this black site was, and we brom missed the country where the black site was located that we would never reveal it. what his lawyer said is everybody knows it was poland. it's an open secret. why are we still pretending like

it's a state secret? today the security said no, the government has the better argument here so they cannot get the information. jose, one other note, we'll get more supreme court decisions tomorrow. >> okay. we'll stay on top of that. pete, thank you very much. i want to turn back to the invasion of ukraine. even as moscow wraps up its violent attacks on ukrainian cities, russian troops continue to meet fierce ukrainian redistance. two russian officials tell nbc news that about 5,800 russians have been killed in the conflict so far. u.s. officials cautioned estimates are hard to narrow down and nbc news hasn't been able to independently verify these figures. meanwhile, "the new york times" writes the reality of war -- joining me with the latest from moscow is nbc news foreign correspondent ralph sanchez. thanks for being with us. there's report that morale is

low among russian troops, but inside russia are concerns about what the future holds for their country. >> reporter: we're hearing reports all across russia of mothers and fathers getting despairing messages from their sons fighting in ukraine. the ukrainian ambassador read what he said was a russian soldier's final text message to his mother where he said, mamma, we were told we were being sent to ukraine to liberate the people here. instead they are calling us fascists and throwing their bodies literally in front of our tanks to stop us advancing. jose, overnight the russian defense ministry for the first time giving the russian public a sense of how many of their service members have been killed in ukraine. the defense ministry says 498 have died in the first week of fighting. i'll tell you, there are reasons to be skeptical about that number. western officials, as you said,

said the real figure is much higher than that. just assuming for a moment that that figure is correct, that is higher than the total number of u.s. troops killed in the entire first year of fighting in iraq in 2003 and it's higher than the british lost in 20 years fighting in afghanistan. so that news very demoralizing for people here on the home front. >> ralph, meanwhile the economy in russia must be feeling already the effects of this global worldwide sanctions. >> we are seeing economic life in this country turning upside down as the value of the ruble, the russian currency collapses, prices are skyrocketing on everything from car parts to toys to grocery items in the supermarket. people are really, really flit ended that their savings that they built up over years are going to be wiped out by these

sanctions, by the inflation as a result of vladimir putin's war. a lot of young people, educated people are trying to flee russia. jose, that isn't an easy thing to do. if you go to one of moscow's international airport and look at the departure board, you'll see a sea of cancellations because european, north american airspace are all closed to russian aircraft right now. a lot of people very worried about what the future looks like in this country, but the big question, will the fact that they're taking to the streets to protest have any influence on vladimir putin's thinking? he is behind the walls of the kremlin. we believe he's melting with his national security council today. right now there's no signs of the russian president changing his minds. >> ralph sanchez, thank you. still ahead, the january 6th committee claiming trump may have committed crimes during the

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♪ ♪ ♪a little bit of chicken fried♪ ♪cold beer on a friday night♪ ♪a pair of jeans that fit just right♪ ♪and the radio up well i've seen the sunrise...♪ get 5 boneless wings for $1 with any handcrafted burger. only at applebee's the senate plans to hold

confirmation hearings for president biden's supreme court nominee, judge ketanji brown jackson. senator dick durbin laid out the schedule last night writing the committee will undertake a fair and timely process to consider jackson's nomination. also on capitol hill, the house committee tasked with investigating the january 6th attack said in a new court filing it has evidence former president trump, along with members of his campaign, were involved in a criminal conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election. a spokesperson for trump did not respond to a request for comment. he has not been charged with any crime. joining me with the latest, nbc news capitol hill correspondent ali vitali. also with us, maya wiley, civil rights lawyer and msnbc legal analyst. ali, what does this january 6th committee say in this court filing? >> reporter: this is a lengthy

filing we got our hands on last night, more than 200 pages. it includes things like emails and testimonies from key people in the trump orbit including top lawyers and staffers for vice president mike pence as well as allies of the former president who were close to him when he was in the white house as well as people who have stayed in his orbit since he left the white house. the technical reason for this filing is to compel trump ally and attorney john eastman to provide the committee with documents he's currently withholding citing attorney-client privilege. the committee is trying to get at those documents by basically asking this court to find an exemption, the crime fraud exemption which says you can't effectively seek out a lawyer with the express purpose of committing a crime. that's why they lie lei out in detail in this filing they know the former president was told reportedly that he was expected to lose the 2020 election, thusly trying to establish a

little of his mindset as he was going tore ward with these attempts to overturn the election results. eastman for his part is saying attorney-client privilege still stands. in a statement from his attorney it reads in part that all attorneys, dr. john eastman included, i have a responsibility to protect client confidences even at great personal risk and expense. the select committee has responded to dr. eastman's efforts to discharge this responsibility by accusing him of criminal activity. of course, this is going to go through the court system. what this does, jose, it leaves open the possibility that this is going to land, as many expected it would, at the feet of the department of justice. the committee's work is happening on an expedited timeline. the committee hoping to put up an interim report in june before filing the full report before the november midterms. the committee has always been on that faster timeline because of

the politics that could change on the hill. the thing that won't change and it's important now that we consider the role the doj could play in this, it doesn't matter what happens in 2022 when you're talking about the white house and the department of justice. it's still going to be the biden administration and the biden department of justice. >> the doj is one thing. maya, this committee can't prosecutor bring criminal charges. what's the significance of this court filing? >> you're absolutely right, jose. the significance of this filing is it is scorching and it's very difficult to read this filing and not see that there must be a volleyball investigation that includes donald trump. that's because what the committee has done, as ali said, is actually out all the times -- maybe not all the time the committee knows of, that donald trump was told by his own team, his own appointees at homeland security at the department of

justice, his own campaign before january that there was no evidence of fraud in this election, nothing that would permit him to go out and make all the statements he made about election fraud n. january, after this ream of information of what he was told, he continues to tell the lie of election fraud. kmat the committee is saying in terms of the crimes that may have been committed here require that you know you're making false statements and those false statements are designed to interrupt government, and that's exactly what this briefing lays out. >> maya wiley and ali vitali, thank you for being with us this morning. new reporting in "the new york times" appears to indicate that china may have had a heads-up about putin's plans to

invade ukraine a. western intelligence report said senior chinese officials told russian officials in early february not to invade ukraine before the end of the beijing winter olympics. the times also reports chinese shared with russia sensitive information they received from the u.s. to get china to per swat putin to stand down. nbc news has not independently confirmed this reporting. this comes as the justice department is set to seize the assets of russian oligarchs who have been sanctioned. with me, rick stengel, former undersecretary of state for public diplomacy, and andrea kendall taylor, senior fellow at the center for a new american security. former deputy intelligence officer for russia at the national intelligence council and former cia analyst who worked on russian political dynamics. as the u.s. and other countries

target these rich oligarchs, can they be effective? >> that's the number one question now. we have to remember that putin for 22 years has benefited from a very cohesive elite. it's worked because these people have access to patron naj, all the yachts and properties in western cities. you do see sometimes disagreements emerge among the elite. but the key thing is they can't do anything to rock the boat because it would risk bringing down the whole system and disrupting their access to these perks of power. i think that's changing now. historically these elites have never had to choose between putin and the life they want to live. that's totally different now. i think putin understands that. he's more concerned about keeping the elite on his side than he was a week ago. the key question is what the impact would be. you can in one scenario imagine that that new pressure

domestically could create incentives for putin to try to end this war through negotiations, but it's just as likely, if not more likely that putin is going to dig in, really ramp up repression. so i think that's the situation we're in, that given his insecurity now and his concern about elite defection, we don't know how putin is going to respond. >> rick, it's good to see you in person. >> good to see you. >> going after the oligarchs, how do you go after properties, et cetera, that are so intertwined with, for example, europe and even in the united states? soccer teams are now being sold by the oligarchs. they don't want to rock the boat, they were saying, but you can rock their yachts. how do you get after so much money that has purchased so much real estate in the united states, in europe? >> it's not easy. the first round of sanctions sanctioned families where they sometimes hide the money.

i would make the point that we shouldn't just generalize about the oligarchs. there are different classes of oligarchs. putin's bargain is he said i'll make you rich, you keep me in power. they's cycled through a lot of oligarchs. the guys living in london and paris, putin doesn't care about him. he may want to sink their yachts. it's those still around him, the oil industry in russia, the military industrial complex in russia, those are the oligarchs that can damage him, can say, hey, vlad, you're making a mistake. we have to figure out how to sanction them. they're more afraid of putin than the sanctions. >> the ruble is pretty much worthless. clearly these oligarchs don't have their money necessarily in rubles. but how do you hurt those close

to putin. gazprom, schroeder is one of their friends, so there's a lot of ties with europe. >> i'm not an expert in sanctions. i think the treasury department has figured out -- they're meticulously dissecting who is hurt and who is not. >> andrea, what more do you think the u.s. could be doing to go after putin to help the ukrainians? >> i think one good positive thing to stick on the sanctions for a little while is seeing the creation of the department of justice task force where the united states and european allies are taking seriously the implementation of these sanctions and to really ensure that the sanctions aren't being evaded. it's important to find these properties, their shell companies. it's difficult to hunt down where these assets live and reside. the fact that we're going to do more intelligence sharing, bringing together experts on anti-corruption, national

security altogether to hunt down these assets and ensure the oligarchs can't evade these sanctions i think is a positive and critically important step to make sure you really are putting the squeeze on the people around putin. >> how do you see putin surviving? it's not just one person that can run an entire country or entire government. dictators always require henchmen. >> well, it's complicated because it has to be something inside russia, outside russia. it has to be oligarchs combined with protests in russia. that's where he's most vulnerable, where he's most scared about. remember, he thought hillary clinton organized the protests in moscow in 2014. a popular uprising that he can't suppress, combined with oligarchs who are disenchanted with him would be a powerful way to have regime change in moscow. what we all have to hope is

there's regime change in moscow before there is in kyiv. >> does regime change popular uprisings? i'm thinking of the history? the soviet union falls in '91, just from from the top down. we saw the 11th of july people in cuba take to the streets asking for a regime change for freedom. that was able to be successfully tamped down. where does change come from? >> going back to 1990 and '91, putin was a cia officer in dresden. he saw the wall come down, the wall come down without a single shot being fired. why? soft power of the west, the messaging and communications, us talking about it today. all these things i hope will end up overwhelming him. >> rick stengel, always a pleasure to see you. thank you, andrea kendall-taylor. appreciate your time. why inflation is hitting communities of color harder than

white communities. we'll talk to democratic congresswoman cori bush next. you're watching "jose diaz balart reports."

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45 past the hour. overnight gas prices soared across the country, climbing by eight currents a gallon in new york. more than 40 currents in north carolina. the national price for gas prices hit $3.66 per gallon, up 34% from a year ago. costs are only expected to go higher as the russian invasion advances in ukraine, as inflation worsens in the u.s. a new study finds that people hit hardest by surging costs are communities of color. "nbc news now" anchor morgan radford joining us. morgan, this is a fact that we see over and over again. >> over and over again, jose, and all across the country. while the cause of this inflation is certainly up for debate, there's no doubt that

the steepest rise in prices in more than 40 years is hitting communities of color even harder. one report showing black and latino families are bearing the brunt of the rising costs more than their white counterparts. people of color spent more income on food an gas than any other demographic group, as much as 7% higher on energy. that's compared to 5.4% spent on energy by other groups. of course, those two are among the categories that have seen the steepest rise in prices. jose we spoke to latino voters about this issue. they said it's affecting everything from how they eat to how they may decide to vote. >> have these high prices affected you personally? >> yes. the economy, the inflation is impacting people on our budget, our economy. not only that, but how we feel. the one thing i can't believe is that in my previous job i got

paid $5.00 less an hour in this one and i was better off at that time than i am right now. >> you were paid less at your last job and felt you could make ends meet better even though you're paid more? >> yes, and my mom, too. >> just because the prices are so high. [ speaking foreign language ]. >> so you are a widow, you live alone, you don't live with anyone. you've seen your energy bill go up $302. you don't even turn on the tv so you can save the energy. >> everything has gone through, gasoline, food, even to get your kid to and from school.

>> jose, if you want to know how it's impacting this community psychologically, the majority of hispanic americans are less optimistic about their financial situation going into 2022 than they were a year ago. >> morgan radford, thank you so much. joining me now, missouri democratic congresswoman cori bush. thank you for being with us. >> good morning. >> seems like the people who bear the brunt are our communities, people of color. >> yes. >> what do you think needs to happen so this trend can stop? >> first, we need to look at we're talking about the same group of people who we had been advocating for and pushing for to say, hey, we're already struggling to make sure that we have the resources to keep food on the table. we're trying to close racial wage gaps, gender pay gaps, trying to make sure each and every person in black and brown

communities, our native communities have actual health care. so that was a thing before the pandemic. and then the pandemic hit and it exacerbated all of those things. so now with what's going on, we have 4 million children go back into poverty just a little pove a month ago. you know, that's on us because of that child tax credit. what we need to do now, we have to look at getting those resources to the community members that need it the most. so i look -- i think about the black mothers that right now that haven't been able to go back to work because of they can't put their children in child care. you know, when i think about my patients i had when i was working as a nurse who had to make the difference between paying rent or buying food or buying their medications, that's where we are but it's even worse now. making sure that we're lowering costs, taking those resources that have come into our

community because one problem we have is money has come into our state that hasn't been dispersed. we need to make sure that money is getting down actually to the people so we can help people to thrive in this moment. >> i am so grateful that you mentioned these issues and you underlined some of the aspects that are so fundamental for life and yet our communities often times don't have access to health care, child care. then there's the issue, congresswoman, of inflation. it is a tax that affected the poorest among us. how do we deal with that? >> you know, it's very, very expensive to be low wealth. it's very, very expensive to be low income. i know. it doesn't change. nobody asks what's your income, how much you made when you show up to the gas pump. i pay the same amount of gas as somebody else who makes three times as much as i do. no one cares as long as i made it into this apartment complex,

they can do whatever they want with my rent when my lease is up. they make that decision. so the problem is we have to make sure that we are hitting the target. you know, but in order to hit the target, we have to address this from the standpoint of i want to hear it being said in order for us to make this an anti-racist society, we have to call it out and say black communities, brown communities, our native communities are hit the hardest and this is what we're going to do to solve it. so give us back what we had in build back better. we immediate to make sure we're giving free child care, you know, to our 3 and 4-year-olds and making sure no one pays more than 7% of their income for child care for the newborns up to three years and we're capping insulin at $35 and lowering other drug costs. those things have to happen and i implore my colleagues to get in the house and the senate to get on board with this fully.

forget the partisan politics. what we're talking about is saving lives. you have to care about saving black lives. you have to care about saving brown lives. if that's not your thing to care, then we need you to move out of the seat because you have to care about humanity. >> you were critical of the president's state of the union. do you think that he should have focused more on precisely what you're talking about? >> i appreciate the praesz president's comments about community violence prevention, bringing up livable wage. it absolutely affects our communities. but to speak to it directly, to make it known to the entire nation we're going to focus on racial equity. i would have loved to have heard that because we need everybody to know that pushing it to the side or acting like it is not there in the front, you know, it

hurts our community so much when i think about the home care workers who cried in front of me and they said help us because we want to continue to go in and take care of our clients. we want to go into those homes and help them, to be able to bathe and eat and clean their homes. we want to help them but we don't make enough money to be able to do it. i think about the days when i slept in a car and no one cared. no one paid that any attention. but how do we help those folks? we have to speak to it directly. i need you to say our unhoused community, our black community members, our brown community members that are disabled, this is what they're going through and we need to do this work to help. we have to speak to it directly. >> and you know what, nobody cares. it's the worst sin of all. it's when people start caring and focusing that things get done. congresswoman, thank you for being with us this morning. i really appreciate your time. >> the ukrainian president just

spoke moments ago and answered questions from nbc news's richard engel. >> you just mentioned that you want to talk to vladimir putin. vladimir putin has so far not been willing to meet with you. do you have a message for him now that ukrainian cities are under attack, this city is unattack, under attack, a convoy is on its way here. >> i have to talk with putin, the world has to talk with putin because there are no other ways to stop this war. that's why i have to. >> richard engel joins me from kyiv. richard, extraordinary this conversation that you had with the president of ukraine. it's clear that he is not going anywhere and that he wants to see some way forward but do you

see there's any way forward in this? >> reporter: well, this was a fairly intimate gathering of reporters here in kyiv. it was a good reflection, i think, on the president's state of mind. there were -- he arrived, he spent more than an hour talking to us. he took all of our questions. he showed up in the room actually carrying his own chair. he put it down in the front of the room. he seemed relaxed, he was resting at some stage on the arm rest or on his knees. he said he's tired, he's only getting a few hours of sleep at night but he did describe a lot of room for compromise and that's one of the reasons he said that he needs to talk to vladimir putin. he said there's plenty of things to talk about. they are willing here to talk about, that he is willing to talk about security guarantees, or to talk about the donbas

regions, that were initially the pretext for russia's invasion. he said he wants to talk about the language issue. vladimir putin and russian media are always talking how russian speaking people are oppressed. he said if this country remains a sovereign nation, there are other avenues of diplomacy to pursue. >> thank you for being with us this morning, richard engel. and joining us is a greek correspondent in ukraine and was just in mariupol. what can you tell us about what you are seeing and roaring right

now? >> yesterday we left mariupol. [ no audio ] >> we're losing you, chris, unfortunately. as can you imagine, he is literally driving through parts of ukraine, he's been on the road to the nuclear power plant. he's showing us how ukrainian civilians attempted to block the road and these are some. images that he has been sending to his viewers as he crisscrosses ukraine. very difficult situation and unfortunately we've lost our communication with chris, but i just want to show you some of these images just that he's been

showing as he crisscrosses the country. just yesterday he was in mariupol, which has been affected so much by the russian invasion. these images show you the territory that chris and his crew are going through. chris, thank you for being with us. that wraps up the hour for me. i'm jose diaz-balart. thank you for the privilege of your time. coming up, the chief of staff of former vice president will join me. peter alexander picks up with more news right now.

good morning. i'm peter alexander live at the white house. we are following a lot of fast-moving developments as russia's brutal assault on ukraine enters its second week. richard engel just spoke to ukraine's president zelenskyy. the mayor of the city of kherson confirmed that russian forces now control that city. it could make it easier for the russians to move west to try to capture the country's entire black sea coast, which could effectively cut off worldwide shipping to ukraine. this is intensifying the massive humanitarian crisis across europe. the white house now asking congress to provided