good to be with you. i am katy tur. u.s. and european officials warn the darkest days are still to come for ukraine. a senior defense official says 90% of russia's prestaged combat forces are inside ukraine's border now and behind the scenes u.s. officials told u.s. allies that the situation will get, quote, very ugly. in some areas it already is. video taken from inside a car captured one neighborhood getting bombed. numerous projectiles could be seen falling around apartment buildings around a tree-lined street and near a school and a children's hospital. in the video, people could be

seen running and it's along the likely route of the russian convoy. more bombs fell outside kyiv today. a crowded area northwest of the city was targeted by an air assault, and entire sections of high-rise buildings were reduced to rubble. this morning president zelenskyy repeated he would not leave the capital, speaking with reporters including nbc's richard engel, he challenged president putin to meet him saying, quote, i don't bite, what are you afraid of? >> 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 under attack, a convoy is on its way here, is there a way to prevent this war from escalating even

further now? >> it's not that i want to talk with putin, i have to talk with putin, the world has to talk with putin because there are no other ways to stop this war. >> vladimir putin seen here with his security council hours ago spoke by phone with french president emmanuel macron, a phone call that left the french leader disturbed and convinced that vladimir putin would stop at nothing but total control of ukraine. already an estimated 1 million ukrainians have fled their homes to escape russia's war. tom yamas sat down with refugees who made their way west seeking safety. >> they have ruined my city, destroyed many houses. they didn't launch rockets, they dropped bombs. destroyed many, many, many houses. it's not the target, i mean, the

rocket targeted one building, one window, they just dropped bombs -- >> it destroyed everything. >> yes. >> we waited, everyday was shelling, shelling, shelling, and we tried to go to the shelter and there was no place and it's not okay to go to the school, and i don't want my daughter to get sick and plus running from russians, this is not okay. >> one week in this war, you can not make plans, and one minute you are texting and then your brain is not working anymore, and next step go to poland. >> today the eu confirmed it would give temporary protection to those fleeing ukraine. joining me now is nbc news correspondent, matt bradley from

lviv, ukraine, and kelly cobiella from poland. give us the latest about what is happening inside that country. >> i just spoke with somebody in kharkiv today and that city has come under massive pummeling over the last couple of days, and we are seeing the two prongs coming down for the attack on kyiv and kharkiv, and they have been frustrated and slowed down, and the main advances are in the south, and that's the first municipality that the russians have been able to take, and they have been fighting for a full week against a far interior military, and there's dispute about whether or not it has fallen to the russians, and for all practical russians, it has been taken.

now it looks like they are making a mad dash up the river, and we are starting to see signs that they are bringing a land assault into zap, and they could make a southern assault on to the capital kyiv, and then into the second largest city, again, kharkiv. we have seen really a duh icive shift in the terrain here, not just because the first major city has fallen to the russians, but it looks like the russians are making a fast advance up the river and training their guns on the city of odesa, and they are looking for an amphibious

assault on to odesa, the third largest city in ukraine. katy, it looks like one week after frustrating slow advanced by russians in the north, they are making up for lost time in the south. >> we are going to get more on that on that later and why that might be the tactics we are seeing from russia. kelly cobiella, more than 1 million people have fled ukraine and are now refugees, and tell me about the eu and what it's doing to get these people situated. >> we are talking about half a million in poland and 150 plus in hungry, and more in slovakia, and these are huge numbers in these countries and poland has been trying to keep up and doing a phenomenal job when it comes to smaller volunteers and charities and providing services to a lot of these people, but when you are looking longer

term, and i think a lot of these countries are having to look longer term, these people will need access to services and they will need a place to live and health care for schools for their children and need to work. today all 27 european countries agreeing to this special directive that has never been instituted before, allowing refugees in ukraine to work for up to three years, and the initial period is one year and then extendible. that will help to ease the burden on some of these bordering countries so that they are not alone in supporting this massive number of people, katy. it's really, really important and really significant. in the shorter term, there is more of a need for just emergency care in the border countries, both poland and slovakia have asked for help. tents are coming from germany

and greece, and poland is getting medical supplies from france, and big ngos are kick into high gear, a world food program moving something like 400 tons of food to the border areas of poland and romania, and unicef, katy, saying half a million of these refugees are children and they are making a big, big appeal for funding so that they can help take care of not only outside of the country but inside the country. >> when you think about who is coming over, it's mothers and children, and they not only will need jobs but childcare to go out and work and provide for their families. tell me about what you are seeing with this? the vast majority are women and children. >> reporter: they are, over and over again, women and children. women have told me that every mother, every parent wants to get their child out and will get their child out if they can.

we're talking about huge numbers here. in many cases, not only are the women and children coming out, they may be meeting a husband or a male relative that has been working outside of the country, but that male relative in some cases is going back into ukraine. there's a huge need for a support system for a lot of these people as this war continues, katy. you can't have a mother with three children trying to find some way to support them, going to work without having a welfare system around them so that's what a lot of the european countries will have to work on going forward, because really, nobody thinks this is going to be short term. lots of people we spoke to want desperately want to go back to ukraine, but very few of the people we spoke to believe that that's going to happen in the next few weeks or months even. >> they want to go home. can't blame them. they want to go home.

who wouldn't? kelly cobiella and matt bradley, both of you, thank you very much. across ukraine thousands are packing on to trains and looking for a way to escape russia's war and looking for a way to get somewhere, and john sparks made the journey with some of those people from nipro all the way to lviv. >> nobody knows when or where the train will come but in this city there are thousands of people keeping watch. their past and their present has been packed into bags while their future lies on platform 1. the trains head west to the city of lviv, which stands as some sort of beacon, but nobody wants to leave their home. >> how do you feel? >> i am very angry.

>> why? >> because putin [ bleep ]. >> decisions are made in a moment by those who have no time to think. >> how do you feel in your heart? n your heart? >> it's beginning to slow down now, and there's going to be one almighty crush as people try to get on. this man is not in a good way, but they are going to get him on, propelled by fear, they battle to board. the train attendants begged them to step back. bags are hoisted from passenger to passenger, and within a few minutes the train is full.

careful, don't fall. don't come in, he begs. the majority on this train are women and children. men, between 18 and 60 are expected to stay and fight. so those onboard made their solitary farewells. natalia is taking her son to safety. her husband will stay behind. i asked her where she was planning to go. >> some feel shame for leaving their loved ones, and others struggle to make sense of it as the train speeds them away from the front lines.

the train stops in towns and villages as we travel through the middle of the night. and on every platform there are people with suitcases trying to get in. as we approach our final destination, passengers that have been traveling for days contemplate the nature of their escape. >> how are you doing? escape >> how are you doing >> reporter: they arrive to lviv to the sound of air-raid sirens, a reminder of everything they left behind so a majority will continue this journey, moving west into the arms of the european union, a great exodus of travelers wondering if they

will ever go home. >> you look at those -- the luggage and the bags people are wondering, you wonder what in the world do you put in a bag -- what do you consider your utmost essential to get out of a country to flee for your lif is it just clothes or just food or just a bag of diapers, like we saw in the beginning of the piece being handed over and being put inside a train, or is it momentos, do you have room for your photos, do you have room for anything that matters beyond the bare essentials? it's heartbreaking to watch. still ahead, russian's foreign minister, lavrov speaks about whether or not his country would fire the first strike. then armed and ready for the fight, how a ukrainian member of parliament and a mother of three is preparing to defend her country. also, criminal conspiracy. the january 6th committee says

they have evidence that former president trump broke the law in an effort to overturn the 2020 election. e 2020 election

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vladimir putin addressed his country today and he insisted his war on ukraine is going according to plan. he, again, made outrageous claims about the ukrainian people calling them neo-nazis and claiming they are using civilians as human shields, none of which is true. keir simmons spoke with russia's lavrov, and he said this about russia's nukes and what a world war iii is to russia. >> can you assure russia would

not fire a strike anger, a first strike? >> we don't have insane people, we have our military tkaub doctrine. it contains no escalation for de-escalation. mind your president's statements, mr. biden's statements. when responding to a question when there's an alternative on this sanctions from hell, and he said the only alternative is a third world war. >> that's not what biden said, and we will get into in a minute. keir, tell me about that conversation with lavrov and what you are hearing with vladimir putin, and what is it like in moscow? it seems like with all the new sanctions and cutoffs, it seems like a new modern version of the iron curtain that is starting to

fall around that country? >> reporter: interesting you point out that that's not exactly what president biden said, what prime minister lavrov suggested there. when you think about what is being said by the russians like sergei lavrov, they are listening even if they misinterpret it, and it gives you an insight. one of the ways that works, katy, we do an interview or say something on tell investigation like, and they notice it and clip it out and play it out on russian tv and people like putin himself sees it and may be wound up by it, and it could be it was taken out of context and it's just a sound bite.

this is an anxious time inevitably. we did see president putin, as you mentioned, on television again, and interesting his security council was with him but by secure video lines, and his key advisers not sitting close with them but on a secure video line. what he had to say was rehearsing many of the things he said before. he did admit, concede, that russia has had soldiers killed and he conceded that by praising those soldiers that had been killed and at one point he stood up and said a minute of silence for those soldiers and repeated much of the propaganda we heard from russia over the past weeks, and frankly, months. >> keir simmons in oscow. thank you so much. and with me is matthew miller,

and you recognize matt miller from his time working here as an analyst on msnbc. i want to talk about with all of the questions, and this is a question that has been gnawing at me, and with all the sanctions from countries around the world and all of the arms being given to ukrainians by countries all over the world, at what point does the u.s. assess or is there a point that vladimir putin might take retaliatory measures not just against ukraine but against the countries that he says as helping ukraine? >> thanks for having me, katy. good to see you. we have been clear that we are open to a diplomatic path forward they were offering the russians a way out to stop attacking ukraine, and we made clear before this crisis and before russia launched the invasion that we would welcome discussions and negotiations

about mutual security concerns and it's hard to have diplomacy at the barrel of a gun, and now the situation we are in now, russia continues to escalate the attacks on ukraine, and we in the west and throughout the world will continue to hold him accountable and impose sanctions that deny their ability to project power to reinforce their defense industry in the short term and long term. >> matt, we have a cabinet meeting with president biden and members of his cabinet starting in a few seconds, and i don't want to interrupt you for that and it's about a minute long and we will come back out for this interview, so don't go anywhere. it's starting right now. let's go to that. >> we continue to impose very severe -- at least it's in the middle and it will drop in the middle.

the severe economic sanctions on putin and those around him, cutting off access to the technology and global financial system, and the goal to maximize the affect on putin and russia and minimize the harm on us and our allies and friends around the world. our interest is to maintain the strongest unified economic impact campaign on putin in all of history, and i think we are well on our way to doing that. in the state of the union address i announced the department of justice is going after the crimes of russian oligarchs, the russian attorney spoke to that earlier, and those that line russia's pockets with money while ukrainians are hiding in the subways.

we are adding dozens of names to the list including one of russia's wealthiest billionaires, and i am banning travel to america by more than 50 russian oligarchs, their families and close associates. we will continue to support the ukrainian people with direct assistance. i had a meeting this morning with the -- with southeast asia including india and japan, and we will continue to support the people with direct assistance. tuesday night at the capitol we saw people being united, and now in today's meeting we are going to discuss the economy and keeping it growing and bringing

costs down for citizens and we are going to do everything we can to make things more affordable and accessible for the american people. i am trying to end the opioid epidemic and -- >> president biden is laying out the agenda right there. he will kick members of the press out in just a moment and he's not going to take any questions so we feel comfortable going back to matt miller. matt, thanks again. i want to go back to that question specifically, does the u.s. see a potential threat or vladimir putin having a breaking point if he feels like the war is not going for him, which it has not so far, and he sees a flow -- a steady flow of weapons from the west come into ukraine, does he see that even if there are not nato troops on the ground, and there are not american troops on the ground, does he see that in itself as an act of war and does he take

aggressive action outside of ukraine? >> you know, i can't speak for vladimir putin. that's one of the things that has been the open question throughout this crisis is what is vladimir putin going to do next? all we can do is present him with choices and the choices we tried to present him from the beginning is that one path was a diplomatic way forward, and the other way, if he chose it was a military route, if he took military action there are things we could do with our allies and partners to respond. we could impose devastating economic consequences on him and on the russian economy and those oligarchs closest to him. at the same time i want to make clear, president biden made clear from the beginning, we are not going to send u.s. troops into ukraine. we are not threatening russia. we never threatened russia and have not done it from the beginning and at the same time we want to make sure rereinforce our allies and make clear to russia we will uphold our treaty obligations, and one of the

things that has been consistent, they are making claims about others' behavior that they themselves are doing. we hope there's a diplomatic path forward and he hoped that before he invaded and we continue to hope that but that's not the choice he has taken so far. >> the federal security service has drafted plans for public executions of ukrainians in ukraine. has u.s. intelligence confirmed this? do you know anything about it? >> we have raised similar concerns with the human rights council, and there are things we are very concerned about with the way the russian security forces are operating on the ground. look, we already have seen reports, attacking civilian infrastructure, and there's information about troubling behavior that we think russians will plan to engage in, and we

will continue to monitor the claims and if they prove to be true russia ought to be held accountable for them. >> you are seeing intelligence that backs up -- >> i can't speak to particular intelligence, but we raised publicly the fact that we were concerned russia might attempt to engage in behavior inconsistent with the laws of war on the ground, and secretary blinken has spoken to it a number of times. we continue to be concerned about the reports of how russian forces are acting, and if we do find evidence of them committing war crimes or otherwise behaving inconsistent with international law, we believe there ought to be consequences. >> what would those consequences be? >> there are investigations already by the iecc, and our focus has been a supporting the ukrainian government and giving them the ability to defend themselves. we are providing them with

security assistance, a billion dollars of security assistance in the last year, and if we see activities consistent with violating the rules of war, we will look at that. >> i know there are people in this country looking at ukraine and what is happening and look at what more countries like the u.s. can do beyond arming ukrainians. what more can the west do to stop vladimir putin? is there anything else on the table? >> you know, they really are the two things we can do. we continue to make clear to vladimir putin that we will impose serious economic consequences. we have other options we can

employ in the next few days, and at that time we will flow assistance into the ukrainian army, and we are providing humanitarian assistance to refugees that made it to poland and other neighboring countries, and one thing we are not going to do is send u.s. troops in to engage in direct conflict with russia. that's a red line for the president. >> what if there's an interaction between russian jets and american jets, and russia already violated sweden's airspace and nothing happened from that and that's a touchy area, and you have put our military on alert for that and what to do? that's scary. >> i don't want to engage in hypotheticals, u.s. planes are not operating in ukrainian airspace, and there is no reason for there to be such confrontation. >> thank you so much for being

with us with today. still ahead, msnbc national security analyst, clint watts will join me to talk about russia's troop movements and what they can signal in the next couple days. first up, though, january 6th committee is saying former president donald trump may have engaged in criminal activity and what they are trying to get right now. that's up next. at's up next ♪ to bare my skin ♪ ♪ yeah, that's all me ♪ ♪ nothing and me go hand in hand ♪ ♪ nothing on my skin, that's my new plan ♪ ♪ nothing is everything ♪ achieve clearer with skyrizi. 3 out of 4 people achieved 90% clearer skin at 4 months. of those, nearly 9 out 10 sustained it through 1 year. and skyrizi is 4 doses a year, after 2 starter doses. ♪ i see nothing in a different way ♪ ♪ it's my moment so i just gotta say ♪

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trump after he lost the election. the lawyers have been fighting to get access to his e-mails from that time period. meanwhile on capitol hill, press secretary, judd deer, is expected to testify before the committee. joining me is former federal prosecutor, paul butler, and also an msnbc legal analyst and pete williams. >> at this point the goal is to try and get their mitts on what easeman doesn't want them to see. the attorney/client privilege does not apply on how to commit a crime and the committee says there were three crimes, obstructing of the proceeding, and conspiracy to defraud the federal government and plain old fraud by making

misrepresentations. they are trying to persuade the vice president to refuse to count the electoral votes from the states that trump insisted he won, and easeman as a fallback said he could ask for a 10-day fallback in counting the vote, and nothing allows the vice president to do either one of those things. the committee refers to the effort by mr. trump and some in his circle to push states to send in another slate of trump delegates in the seven states that biden won and of course his call to the georgia secretary of state to find more trump votes. these suggestions by the committee are based on conduct that already has been made public, but the court filing provides new corroborating evidence from the committee's interviews during the investigation. what the people had in mind when they did in things is important

if you are going to allege important. let me quote one line from the filing of the committee, the filing supports an inference that president trump and members of his campaign knew he had not won enough electoral state votes to be declared the winner. that's what they have concluded here. >> intent is what they are basically saying, paul butler, and correct me if i am not getting that right, intent, and part of that is because the homeland security director of the elections and cyber security said there was no evidence that anything went wrong with this election that it was safe and secure. his own attorney general, william barr, went to him and said in the oval office, there's no evidence of fraud. you just the election. that's when donald trump took his resignation and told him to get out, according to bill barr.

is that enough for intent? >> it is enough for intent. for obstruction, a criminal prosecution would require proof that trump criminally went to obstruct the counting of the votes, and for conspiracy it would have to be proven trump was deceitful or dishonest when he wanted to stop the electoral ballots from being counted, and there's a lot of circumstantial evidence, for example, the deputy said every time trump was told one claim was false, trump would accept that and then move on to another false claim. we know trump's legal team brought over 60 challenges in seven states and they lost all of those, so the house panel says that people at the department of justice, at homeland security security and

in his own campaign told trump he lost the election fair and square. katy, the question is whether trump simply didn't believe them, which could mean he didn't have criminal intent, or on the other hand whether he knew the election was legitimate but was still determined to hold on to power by any means necessary. >> paul butler and pete williams, gentlemen, thank you very much. still aheada matter of survival. a mother who now has sent her three kids, including a 9-month-old baby to safety, tells us why she is staying behind to fight. ght.

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and this plan has a guaranteed lifetime rate lock so your rate can never go up for any reason. so call now for free information and you'll also get this free beneficiary planner. and it's yours free just for calling. so call now for free information. ukrainian civilians have been the backbone of the resistance and not just men aged 18 to 60 who are required to stay and fight under martial

law, women are volunteering as well and are gearing up with guns as a matter of survival. joining me is a member of parliament. thank you so much for being here with us. how are you and how is your city? >> thank you, and good evening to everyone. i am okay. i am okay. today was a very significant day for me and for all my fellow parliamentarians. it's the first time since we announced martial law that we reassembled in person in parliament to vote in even more laws necessary for our defenders, for our soldiers, to do their job even better than they are doing already. that's the status for me. as for my city, i was shocked to see it in the state in which it is now. i haven't been back home for six

days because i was staying just outside the city as it is much safer there, but when i returned today to my apartment and two of the streets that i know so well from childhood, i felt so so sad. i can't convey that feeling. there's no traffic, no life, no people, and the only sounds are sounds of sirens and explosions going off, and the city is in pain. kyiv, normally -- kyiv normally was called the new berlin of europe. it's so lively. there's so much energy around. all the coffee places, all the bars, all the creative spaces around kyiv just gave it a really strong vibe, this vibrance, this livelihood was

just everywhere and now it's gone. now there's a sense of a city lost. but i am confident that it will all come back. >> i am happy that you are confident in that. i want to ask you about your children. earlier in the week you said your kids, i believe they are 8, 6 and 9 months old. i have a 9-month-old baby at home, and that resinated with me personally. you said they were sleeping under a stairwell, under the stairs in your house to stay safe. where are they today and how are they doing? >> today they are believe they are in the safest place possible. i am very happy that they are being taken care of. i spoke to them on zoom, on a video call today. they seemed very happy just getting on with their lives. i guess that's the only thing

that matters to a mother, right, to see your children smile, to see them tell you about the new things that they discovered in the world today, to hear their amazement. i am just happy that they are safe and that they -- that i know they are safe and i don't have to worry every single second of the day whether they will get hurt physically, but also whether they will get hurt psychologically, because for me my biggest worry was what were all of those sounds of sirens doing to them? what was all this disturbance of their natural and normal routine doing to them. they were out of school and they would have been out of school for god knows how many more weeks and months maybe, and out of touch with their friends with their little community, which they have already assembles. i believe that that would have a detrimental impact on their

future and on their behavior. as every mother in ukraine is doing right now, i found the safest option possible for them. for me it's important to concentrate on all the other children in ukraine and make sure they are safe and out from the war zone and war zones that possibly is coming. >> you have stayed behind to fight and you have been armed. are you ready to do so? are you ready to potentially put yourself in harm's way? >> the weapons which i possess, they are there for self defense, and self defense only and only in a very critical situation. my main weapon is this. it's my phone. it's also the computer screen, because what i do all the time is i coordinate efforts, humanitarian efforts, and i coordinate evacuation schemes. i coordinate international community efforts to impose even

more sanctions on russia. all the media interventions, it's an appeal to help ukraine and stand with ukraine, not just with hash tags, although that is good in itself although that's good in itself also, but also donating to the ukrainian army. there are bank accounts available for them the international money transfers, very easy to do from apple pay. my appeal is also to all the people watching this, talk to your members of parliament, your congressmen, and ask them to impose a no-fly zone over ukraine. we really need that in order for people like me, mothers like me and our children to stay alive. we need an air force much more strong than what we have now, hitting back to russian missiles and hitting back the russian

planes bombing ukraine and targeting hospitals, schools, kindergartens, targeting residential areas and all other civilian areas you can imagine, just to hurt civilians, just to turn the population into a state of panic and to destroy the ukraine nation as a nation. what is happening here is a real massacre, a genocide of the ukrainian people. you have to power to stop that, simply by speaking to your government officials, to your parliamentarians and say we need to save ukrainians, we need a no-fly zone over ukraine. it's as easy as that. lesia vasylenko, thank you very much. i think it's powerful that you see your weapon is your phone. information is power and information can be more effective than weapons, than

arms. thank you very much. a week into the conflict in ukraine, it's clear the russians have not made as much progress on the ground as they hoped. they seized kherson in south ukraine, but the ukrainians have maintained control of most major cities including the capital of kyiv and the second largest city of kharkiv. cliff watts is joining me. putin, from all of our reporting about u.s. intelligence had hoped to have kyiv by now. tell me about his military operation and what so far has gone wrong? >> that's right, katy. he thought -- vladimir putin thought he would have ukraine under his control right now. he took on a plan that was quite daring, three fronts and a coup. the plan was to advance onto these three fronts into kyiv and from the south, creating a land bridge and separately instigate

a coup. you might remember this time last week we were hearing about airborne operations dropping in here around kyiv. that plan failed. essentially they were trying to go in, drop soldiers in, bring them to kyiv, take the zelenskyy administration out, reinstall an administration sympathetic to vladimir putin. that didn't work. separately what we've also seen is that the russian military has not been as good as it seems. right now what we have is a situation where there's a convoy. this convoy. this isn't the vaunted mugs military. notice there's almost no separation. one, they fear no air power. two, they're not disciplined, not working in the way they were designed. what's striking about this, now inside kyiv you're putting the city put to siege. you're seeing an increase in indirect fires. also another key point that's happening right now.

we've heard a lot about russian failures but we're starting to see the effects of their successes. they're hitting locations like cher hiv. they're bringing more and more fire. this is going to be devastating amounts of fire that we haven't seen. what's most important today, we're start to see where they're having successes, and they're having successes in the south. down here, the one series of units that did really well, that was the units out of crimea. the area they took in 2014, they quickly broke out and made their way to mariupol. this is foreshadowing, what we will see is they build up combat power around kharkiv.

kherson is at the mouth of the river which is the supply line for all of ukraine. you can essentially go from the black sea up there. if they get across that, they can advance all the way over here to mole dove va. once they've done that, they've sealed off ukraine's access to the sea. that would be a major supply route but it would essentially shrink ukraine to where the only supply routes we could talk about in the future are coming through land routes in poland. i think this is where we're starting to see just the sheer combat power and volume despite all the russian failures, will eventually bring siege to kyiv and bring the country to a stalemate. >> the supply routes are necessary. we have a little breaking news from russia's chief negotiator, vladimir medinsky saying they have agreed with ukrainian negotiators to create a humanitarian corridor to evac at

civilians. this is what he said. we managed to find mutual understanding on some of them, but the main issue that was decided today is the issue of saving people who found themselves in the zone of military conflict. the ministries of defense of russia and ukraine have agreed on the format of maintaining humanitarian corridors for the exit of the population and on the possible temporary, possible temporary cease-fire in the humanitarian corridor area for the period of the release of the civilian population. remember, there are a lot of people who are stuck inside ukraine right now. there are thousands of people who are sheltering in bombshell terse and there are a whole lot of people all over the country who are trying to get out by both car and by train. already a million people have gotten out of ukraine so far. that number is expected to rise a lot. that's going to do it for me

today. hallie jackson picks up our coverage next.

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