husband would be doing and she said he would be screaming at the top of his lungs. >> thank you for the privilege of your time. craig melvin whom i love and admire dearly picks up with more news right now. love right back at you, jose. good thursday morning to you. craig melvin live here in new york city. this hour we are following some fast-moving developments in ukraine, including the incredible toll the war is taking on russian forces facing extraordinary ukrainian resistance. nbc's chief correspondent richard engel is going to join us in just moments after witnessing this dramatic scene in harkiv. >> they had all of their

positions here, dug out positions and they were bombed. there's still some bodies in this area and they left a lot of their equipment behind after what appears to be a devastating attack on their position. there's nothing left. >> we're also going to dig into the desperate plight of one of the most vulnerable groups in ukraine, the elderly. >> i guess the government don't have -- doesn't have time for to think about old people. >> we're also watching the white house this hour because in roughly two and a half hours, president biden is scheduled to talk about his plan to bring down those skyrocketing gas prices we've all been feeling. a source telling nbc news the administration is weighing a big change involving our oil reserves. how all of that could affect your gas bill. also today, the first member of former president trump's family set to appear virtually and voluntarily before that january

6th committee. we're talking of course about jared kushner. what the panel hopes to learn from the former president's son-in-law and former senior adviser. we'll get to that a little bit later this hour. let's get right to our team covering ukraine on the ground. richard engel is with us and a big thanks to all of you gentlemen. richard, let's start with you there. ukrainian forces continue to put up a powerful fight there. but president zelenskyy says russia is planning a new offensive where you are. what are you watching for? >> so president zelenskyy overnight said that russia is planning a new offensive in eastern ukraine and this comes after the russians pledged to scale back their attacks,

drastically scale back attacks around kyiv, but earlier today, just a short while ago, the secretary-general of nato said they're not seeing -- nato is not seeing any evidence that russia is scaling back its attacks, no evidence that russia is pulling back its forces, but that russia is merely repositioning its troops. now this is probably not a major surprise. there was great skepticism that russia was not going to live up to its words, that it would be using this opportunity to just rearm, but now we have this statement from the nato secretary-general saying that they're seeing not -- they're not only seeing evidence of a lack of a russian pullback but they are seeing evidence that russia is actively rearming. so it seems now we are now entering into a phase where russia's going to continue to try and topple the government in kyiv and is going to launch some sort of offensive here in the

east. we're now over a month into this conflict. we're at about the six week mark and some patterns are starting to emerge. we've seen that russia wanted to knock out the government in a quick blow, in a blitz, that failed. vladimir putin tried to launch a campaign against the cities. the cities still resisted. now he tried negotiations, perhaps as a diversionary tactic and now they're going back to the tried and true russian approach, which is to bring in as much fire power as they can and topple cities, inflict tremendous amount of damage and cause a lot of civilian casualties. we are in a continued stalemate and i think the ukrainian people are bracing for a very long fight and that spells deep trouble for the people of think

country, 4 million of them already refugees. >> in kharkiv, richard, thank you. please be safe, sir. thank you, thank you. let's talk about these troop movements here. again, to richard's point, the russians initially said they were, you know, drawing back now today, the reports that they're not nato secretary-general says they're just repositioning. clint, what do we know based on the troop movements that you've been following so closely about what the russians are doing right now. >> i think the nato commander is exactly right. they are repositioning. i think any time you hear russian negotiators weigh in, they want to talk or thinking about peace, they're often just stalling to keep the ukrainian military from advancing further on them. they are moving troops around, that's for sure. what we've seen so far is they're pulling back towards

belarus and some of those corridors where they're clearly overextended. that corridor that extends down to kyiv and chernihiv, where they've had little success. kharkiv is closer to the russian border, easier for them to resupply. this area of kyiv was always a daring plan and they could not link all of those axis up. they can break them up and put them under leaders who are doing better. i think what they had around kyiv, they had some of their weaker forces. over here they're now focusing in the east because they would like to take donbas.

that's that area you see donetsk and luhansk there. craig, yesterday we talked about conscription numbers. those numbers have come out. they're pretty consistent. >> there is a real scandal inside russia that essentially the defense minister, shoigu, he essentially confirmed some conscripts were used, they're not to be used outside of russia. they're for internal defense. i bet for sure they needed that manpower. when you look around the world, russia is going to everywhere he can to find mercenaries and there's even talk in chechnya that they're trying to bring prisoners out and give them their freedom if they fight. unless they reposition in the east, they have a chance on losing on all fronts rather than

securing gains on one front. >> my colleague was told, quote, it's way too soon to feel any confidence in russia's draw back around kyiv. fact is russia has taken heavy losses so far. what do you have make of what we're seeing on the ground right now in some of the reports that we're getting? >> well, i think the confidence that you take is not from what russia is saying. it's from the success that the ukrainians have had on the ground. clearly they denied putin's initial objective of a rapid decapitation of the ukrainian government. the russian supply lines got extended and they didn't think they would face the fierce resistance they have from the ukrainian military. they could not encircle kyiv, which is why they could not do kyiv like they did to mariupol. now that your retreating back. it's very common for the russians as they're

repositioning their military strategy to obfuscate what they're doing. i think it's right that the administration has been very clear. that's not what's going on here. russian is doing these things for their own military purposes and because of the need russia feels to focus on the east and to some extent the south here. for those of us observing this, when you hear about the peace process and negotiating, we have to take that with a very large grain of salt. i'm not convinced those negotiators even know what putin's end game is. i'm sure russia has used negotiations in the past and cease fires to buy time, to reposition their military objectives and their military resources, but i do think that it's clear that the center of gravity for the time being in terms of most of the fighting is going to be and the east and the

south and that may be, again, a russian effort to consolidate some amount of gain as they drag on peace talks in the coming days and months. >> the kremlin -- they've been too afraid to tell him the truth about the losses he's experienced so far. "neither the state department nor the pentagon have real information about what is happening in the kremlin." you're a former deputy national security adviser. what can you safely tell us about how we get intelligence about putin when his inner circle is so locked down and apparently doesn't even use cell phones or other technology. >> well, there are a lot of ways to draw an intelligence picture. as you move out from that inner circle, there are different ways

of collecting information. and, look, what i point to, craig, is the reality that the united states has been spot on throughout this conflict. if you want to verify the capacity the united states has, just look at how much the united states called not just the invasion itself but the focus on kyiv at the outset. that was something that came out of the united states intelligence community, too. i'd also say, craig, look, you don't need to have intercepted communications or human intelligence spies on the ground to realize that people would not want to tell vladimir putin things that he does not want to hear. you and i can tell on the television and watch those russian national security meetings where literally you have senior officials looking terrified that they're going to say the wrong thing in front of putin. this is a condition of a man who's been in power for 20 years, whose circle has shrunk

to the people who will tell him what he wants to hear. we know analytically that there are people over the years who have been occasionally willing to deliver not good news to putin. those people aren't there anymore, craig. he's left with the inner circle people, people came up with him in the kgb, who are fsb people, who share his ideology or will tell him what he wants to hear because that's how they maintain their status and their wealth frankly. this is an intelligence point but also a common sense point that a dictator this isolated from objective reality is not getting all the information of what's happening around him. >> clinton watts, thank you, sir and ben rhodes, thank you so much for your analysis and

perspective. >> south carolina senator lindsey graham announced on the senate floor he is a no on confirming judge ketanji brown jackson on the supreme court. senator graham is speaking live right now. the senior senator from the palmetto state cited his issues with jackson's record on child pornography cases that republican senators used to try and discredit her during her hearings. graham did previously vote to confirm jackson to the circuit court of appeals in d.c. judge jackson does have the support of at least one republican. yesterday we told you about maine senator susan collins confirming that she is in fact a yes vote on judge jackson. the judge is expected to be confirmed to the high court. 45 bucks just to fill up your car with gas. and a lot of places it's a lot more than that. keeping to a budget has gotten so much harder because of rising gas prices. up next, president biden's new

plan to try and bring those prices down. plus, he was there for just about every step of the trump campaign and then the presidency. so what will the january 6th investigators ask jared kushner at their interview today? that appears to have already started. we'll talk about what we know so far. then we've got an inside look at one of the biggest challenges in evacuating ukrainians, helping older people, helping the elderly get to safety. >> translator: we were bombarded ruthlessly, she said. one word can describe the situation -- hell. but she calls her 8-year-old granddaughter a hero for helping her. totaled his truck. timber... fortunately, they were covered by progressive, so it was a happy ending... for almost everyone. [sound of helicopter blades] so it was a happy ending... ugh... they found me. ♪ ♪ nice suits, you guys blend right in. the world needs you back. i'm retired greg, you know this.

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so right now here in new york, if you pull up to gas up your car, your truck, 12 gallon tank, it's going to cost you nearly $52. that's 17 more than it would have cost you just one year ago. $17 more. if you fill up every week, that is costing you nearly $850 more a year. but some relief may be on the way. in just a few hours president biden is expected to announce a new plan to try and combat those rising prices. and nbc news has learned part of that plan could include releasing around a million barrels of oil every day from the country's strategic petroleum reserve. peter alexander joins me now with more details on this.

what more can you tell us about it? >> initially we knew they were considering this plan. now it's official. the president, we are told, will make it official when he speaks at 1:30 today that he is announcing the release of 1 million barrels of oil each day on average for the next six months, a total of 180 million barrels of oil, which is significant. it's the largest release of oil reserves in u.s. history. the administration telling us this would be a bridge until the end of this year when domestic production can ramp up and production by other countries that the u.s. imports right now. the u.s. did try this, the biden administration did try this only a matter of months ago back in november announcing the release of 50 million barrels of oil. clearly that only had a very limited impact on the price of gas. americans are paying 60 cents

more per gallon than they did just a month ago. the white house says about $1 more than they did when president putin began his ramp up of troops outside ukraine. this is an effort to try to combat that. another announcement the president will make is he'll invoke the defense production act to sort of speed the transition to clean energy, trying to secure production of key minerals and materials needed to produce large scale batteries for electric vehicles and for use in a more clean energy economy, materials, minerals like lithium as well as nickel. and they're taking about the use-it-or-lose-it policy. they're talking about penalties

for companies that lease public lands to produce energy but are not using them. >> peter, thanks as always. former president trump's son-in-law, jared kushner, meeting with january 6th investigators today. that meeting now apears to be under way on capitol hill. so far the highest ranking member of the trump administration and the first member of the trump family to meet with the january 6th committee. what they could be asking him next. sking him next that oddly satisfying feeling when you don't do it yourself.

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voluntarily. what kind of information is the committee looking to get from jared kushner? >> yeah, craig. voluntarily and virtually, just a few floors from where i'm standing, our eagle-eyed producers were able to spot a figure on the screen that looked very much like jared kushner, that deposition beginning around 10 a.m. they're around 90 minutes into it. if we see anything happen upstairs, we'll come to you immediately. this comes against the back drop of a committee that is both trying to press ahead into a more narrative building phase of their investigation while also seeing and fielding new threads of information that are coming from their investigation ongoing. jared kushner is a prime example of that. we know, for example, the committee has a wide range of topics they are investigating. of course they are interested in those seven critical hours of missing phone records and communications gap from the white house, but they're also interested in who won the campaign and what the

conversations were on the campaign with outside groups regarding planning january 6th but also the broader scheme of overthrowing the election results. jared kushner was out of the country in the days leading up to january 6th but if you look at the enough text messages between ginni thomas and mark meadows, it's clear he was receiving emails at least around potential legal threats to overturning the results. . i imagine that's one of the key lines of questioning they will have for him. family holds a very specific and special place for him he has always taken that advice in a different way. so it's going to be interesting to see what jared kushner can offer this committee but it also comes at a moment that the committee has to figure out at what point do they put the pen

down and stop investigating and pivot to more public hearings. i remember hearing february would be the moment we started seeing public hearings from the committee. now chairman bennie thompson said may is what they're looking for. he hoped to wrap up the deposition phase by the end of this month. the more questions they ask, the more questions seem to aride is that. >> questions begetting more questions, it would seem. we know jared kushner is one. president's closest advisers and he's out of country in the run up to january 6th, didn't return until the day of the riot. where does kushner fit in the committee's investigation? >> well, look, you know, kushner was not heavily involved in the whole rudy giuliani, mike flynn, sidney powell orbit of election fraud allegations, right?

he basically checked out of that in the post-election period and was trying to spend husband time on middle east peace. he had had a throughin which criminal established diplomatic relations. it was a big moment. he wanted to focus on getting done as much as he could in those final months and he's used that since leaving office as a basis for future business deals and so forth as well. so he was out of the country on january 6th, just returning that afternoon from saudi arabia. so i think that he offers the sort of the counter thread in that without at the time while the rudy giuliani crowd was filling the president's ear with all these fanciful claims and nonsense i call allegations. kushner was basically literally out of the country.

>> reporting from the "times" say investigators are documenting how the former president's tweet that ended with, quote, be there, will be wild -- how instrumental could kushner be in terms of piecing to the those details? >> well, in terms of understanding architecture of trump world. he was there all four years, he was there before, he was there after. he tells people donald trump is my kids' grandfather. even he disagree with his father-in-law, he is part of

that circle and chose to be. he can help investigators understand who was important, who wasn't, who he won't listening to, like his lawyers. you know, bill barr as we've seen, pat cipollone and so forth and trump chooses to bend reality in favor of his narrative, even if it has no basis in fact. so kushner is uniquely capable of that probably more than almost any other witness they'll talk to. >> peter baker, always good to you have. thank you, sir. ali vitale, a big thanks to you also on the hill. >> ukrainian forces have forcibly taken hundreds of thousands of civilians to russia. one woman from mariupol describing the ordeal inside the russian filtration camps to "the washington post." quote, each person was

photographed from all sides and fingerprinted and then the ukrainians were told to turn over their phones and passwords to another office. the next step was interrogation. i'll talk to a former adviser about what those folks and the people still inside ukraine have gone through. and the people still inside ukraine have gone through easy-to-use tool, and interactive charts to give you an edge, 24/7 support when you need it the most. plus, zero-dollar commissions for online u.s. listed stocks. [ding] get e*trade and start trading today. never settle with power e*trade. it has powerful, easy-to-use tools to help you find opportunities, 24/7 support when you need answers, plus some of the lowest options in futures contracts prices around. [ding] get e*trade and start trading today. ♪ with my hectic life, you'd think retirement would be the last thing on my mind. hey mom, can i go play video games? sure! ...after homework. thankfully, voya provides comprehensive solutions, and shows me how to get the most out of

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priceline. every trip is a big deal. . so imagine this. you wake up every day in the same town, in the same country that you've lived your entire life. you've reared your children there, maybe even your grand kids. but now russian forces are closing in and you're forced to flee the only home you've ever known. this is the reality for hundreds of thousands of elderly ukrainians right now, most of whom don't want to be evacuated.

gabe gutierrez met one grandmother. >> we met val tina. the grandmother sobbed as she described her 15-mile trek on foot as she got to the bus. we were bombarded ruthlessly she said but called her 8-year-old granddaughter a hero for helping her, an awful journey she said would have been impossible to survive alone. >> gabe gutierrez there with me now. igor, thanks again for your time this morning. let's start with what we heard there. one in four citizens in ukraine over the age of 60. 91% of them need help getting food because of mobility issues. what more can be done to help these older ukrainians specifically that are in desperate need right now? >> well, first of all, i mean,

we have extensive volunteer efforts to try and care for the elderly and for the disabled. but at the same time the scale and just the sheer terror of this disruption that happened in ukraine is just unbelievable. at the moment we need all the help we can get. we need humanitarian aid, we need finances, we need the war to stop or the skies closed. those elderly people are leaving or they are trapped because we're being bombarded. >> in the last 48 hours the russians initially claimed they were drawing back from kyiv and surrounding areas. today nato's secretary-general said they're not, they're just repositioning. what does this signal to you, if anything? >> well, i'm in kyiv at the moment. so today has definitely been a quieter day. we're getting unconfirmed

reports that russians are either retreating or rotating their troops near kyiv. so we can take a breather basically. but at the same time, nobody buys the whole russia is retreating and that's the end of it for kyiv story. so i think we're in between two waves of attack and i think having learned his lesson from, you know, the initial failures, putin will definitely try again. so far i'm not seeing any markers that, you know, he's p he regrets what he's done. >> the kremlin rejected u.s. claims that president putin is being misled by his advisers about russia's failures on the battlefield so far. do you believe that putin's advisers are too afraid to tell him the truth about what's gone on so far? >> i would easily believe that. but i still think he's well

informed. i think the only mistake he thinks he made was to trust troops to have ukrainians welcome him with flowers. i think we are in for the second wave. i think he's going to focus on donbas in eastern ukraine for the moment but then he's going to return and apply pressure to kyiv again. >> how are you holding up these days? your friends who stayed back, how are they all doing? >> everyone's doing well actually. kyiv is coming back to life, small businesses are opening. one thing i worry about is the long-term effects on our economy and the short-term effects on our economy. we still have some momentum to keep things running but then we'll need some help. that's why only today i announced one of the initiatives to try and get western businesses to see how they can

collaborate with ukrainian businesses to keep us going until at least the war is over. it's turning into a war of attrition. >> your former boss, president zelenskyy started addressing the belgium parliament about two hours ago. among other things he said that thousands of residents of mariupol with how is the rescue effort for folks who are still trapped there going? what do we know about that? >> well. >> basically he sent us a messenger out, he sent us a description of what happened. so she refused to go to the cellular. she said i was born here, i will die here and unfortunately she was in the kitchen, a mortar

shell landed and she was killed instantly. and she's buried in the back yard. they can't evacuate the bodies so the neighbors just buried her. >> thank you. and please continue to stay safe there for us. thank you so much, igor. >> 500 million more dollars in direct aid to the ukrainians. president biden promised that wednesday to president zelenskyy. but how far will it go? will congress try and do more? if so, what? i'll talk about that with the house republican next. are rethinking the choices they make like the splash they create the entrance they make, the surprises they initiate. otezla. it's a choice you can make. otezla is not a cream. it's a pill that treats plaque psoriasis differently. with otezla, 75% clearer skin is achievable. don't use if you're allergic to otezla. it may cause severe diarrhea, nausea, or vomiting. otezla is associated with an increased risk of depression.

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we're already at half rations in many of these countries and now with this particular war, i mean, you know, how do we take food from a hungry child and give it to a starving child? how do you make that kind of a decision? that's what we're up against. >> that was now ambassador cindy mccain speaking exclusively to josh lederman in poland. that interview came as president

biden told president zelenskyy the u.s. will send another $500 million in aid to ukraine. congressman, earlier this month the president signed into law that massive spending package that included nearly $14 billion for military and humanitarian aid. the white house says the administration is preparing to offer more than a billion dollars in additional funding toward humanitarian assistance. is all of this going to be enough? >> i think it's hard to say. putin needs to stop his war. it's an unjust attack on ukraine. they have a right to self-defense and self-determination. i think people around thele world have been united to support president zelenskyy and the people of ukraine. i think the challenge is when you look at the logistics of unrolling this, there's no way that all $14 billion that the united states has given and billions more that others around the world have given have been able to be deployed into ukraine.

so i think there's a tendency to kind of continue reacting, reacting but there's a lag between the time that you can pass a bill and the goods and services can reach the right people on the ground in ukraine. >> how much archlag are we talking about here? how long is it going to take for the money and the goods and services to reach the ukrainian people, to your point? >> the weapons are making it into ukraine but are they making it to the right places within ukraine. when you're talking about humanitarian assistance, those things are making it into nato countries in nearby areas, into western ukraine and frankly inside ukraine will be heavily dependent on ukraine's own ability to get people out. war is horrible and we're continually reminded of that, especially in this news cycle. it's a horrible thing. >> the president expected in just a few hours to talk about lowering the energy burden in the wake of russia as invasion. we just reported a few minutes ago that president biden is announcing that the united

states is going to be releasing 1 million barrels of oil every day from the strategic oil reserves. do you support that step? does that make sense to you? >> i think it's exactly why we have a strategic oil reserve and i hope he'll do that with companion policies that make it easier to produce energy in america. not just release the reserves but do things that help us replenish it by being more energy independent here in the united states. >> what about requiring some of these oil and gas companies that have leased land but aren't using that land to manufacture oil or gas? >> well, they have leases they're not using but why? because the permitting process has been changed under president biden. so simply reverse the policies that caused them to choke off their new investment and i'm sure they'll put the capital to work. >> in addition to being a congressman, you're a west point

grad. the united states has roughly 100,000 troops stationed in europe right now. is that enough of a footprint? should this war god forbid expand into nato countries? >> we're trying to do everything we can to make sure are finally stepping up and spending money on defense. weakness does invite aggression. nato has been perceived as weak and frankly, it's time for nato to do what the previous administration was calling for them to do, which is invest in your own defense and decrease energy dependence on russia. while they didn't heed that warning then, at least they're doing it now. >> thank you.

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so, ten years is long enough to host a daily news cast. so, this is it for me. i'm stepping away this hour on msnbc. i'll be at the "today" show and cris cross doing dateline, working on a host of other projects. but i sure will miss our time together here every day. this nearly a decade-long stretch of hosting a dabl cable news program has been a tremendous honor and i'm so very thankful for the opportunity to really have had a front row seat to so much history. tumultuous campaigns, elections, natural disasters. too many a mass shootings and a global pandemic. so many of the stories i've covered here and the people i've met on assignments have moved me in myriad of ways. some days sad, angry, confused.

but always hopeful and i've tried to cover the news fairly and steer clear of inserting my opinion or perspective. we've tried to traffic in facts and truth and let you makeup your mind every day and i'm very proud of that. we've gone out of our way to highlight, not merely the death, doom or destruction. we tried to introduce you to ordinary people doing the extraordinary. before i go, i did want to take a few moments to thank the amazing team of producer journalists who have put me on their shoulders for nearly a decade. the list is too long to mention by name but they know who they are are and they know how much they've meant to me. in fact, many have become dear friends. i did want to name check my executive producers over the years. shirley and matt pitser and marty hawse, who i've known nearly half my life now. and thank you to yvette miley for taking a chance on a kid from south carolina who was

working in d.c. and thank you to phil griffon and to rasheeda jones, especially, who gets it and whose vision for news and what this place can be is quite exciting. i wanted to thank the contributors, the experts, the panels, the crews here in the studio. include ourg crews in the field, too numerous to name who have done their level best to help us make sense of so much madness. you have aflicted the comfortable and comforted the afflicted, spending countless hours away from your families to tell stories that matter and especially lately. you've risksed so much to take us to the frontlines of war. your work has been the backbone of our jobs and i'd like the

take a moment to thank my parents. my mother cultivated curiosity -- almost. cultivated the curiosity that landed me here. and my dad, who taught me hard work. it's not how you start, it's how you finish. and my wife, lindsey, who has endured long days and short nights and last-minute travel. the glue that really keeps it all together. and thank you for letting me into your homes, your businesses, and your vehicles for an hour every day. i appreciate you seeing the value in journalism, showcasing inplight of the least among us, simply asking questions and waiting for answers. we need it now perhaps more than we ever have. thank you. again, i haven't been fired. not quitting. we just won't be able to meet up here at this time every day. it's all i got and that's going

to do it for me this hour. "andrea mitchell reports" starts right now. >> and not so fast, craig. because you have been my neighbor for all these years and i know you're not going far. i'll be seeing you every morning on "today" and anchoring "today" but i just want to tell you how much you mean to me, how much i've loved following your foot steps every day and before that, our long friendship when you were at nbc, wrc in washington. you have never forgotten your south carolina roots. as we know so well from all your coverage of so many stories, especially mother emmanuel, that tragedy and so many others. we want to say you are loved by your team and they wanted it me to to say, because they're too shy to say it themselves. so, this is from them. thank you for your guidance, wit, drive, every day to do right by the viewer. this is your team now, each us is gradeful for our time together. know in your ten years as a host

on msnbc you did some good and i'll say amen to that. we'll all be watching. >> love you, love you. that was sweet. and good day. this is "andrea mitchell reports" in washington. as vladimir putin is dismissing thutempts for a ceasefire, ukrainian forces are engaging in the northern city a chernihiv. just hours after russia's claims of deescalation in the city. they say russian forces are regrouping along the country's border with belarus, receiving additional weapons, equipment and man power from the kremlin ally. the attacks on the war-torn city continue with dozens of new mortar and tank strikes overnight. kharkiv local leaders say some russian troops are not allowing civilians to leave through humanitarian corridors.