cnn's ben lederman gives us a firsthand look at the devastation. >> reporter: somewhere in this jumble of concrete, bricks and twisted metal are more bodies. they are trapped in the ruins of the office regional governor. tuesday morning, russian missile struck the building, killing more than a dozen people, wounding many more. >> they bombard our city and only civilians are dying here. >> reporter: the mayor does not normally come to city hall like this. he saw were coming long ago. he prepared himself. >> i saw from 2014, i felt that the war would be like this. everything you see on me, vests, boots, anything, i bought it a couple years ago. i started to learn how to shoot . i was in a special school for that. >> reporter: on the outskirts of the city, recently downed russian attack helicopters suggested the ukrainian military also saw this were coming. they managed to stop russian forces in their tracks. they regained territory lost at the start of the war. this five-year-old is recovering from shrapnel wounds to his head, in the basement turned bomb shelter at the regional children'

are now going to talk a bit further about it as i'm joined by nbc's josh lederman from warsaw, msnbc political contributor, ben rhodes, former deputy national security adviser under president obama, cnbc anchor hadley gamble at the nato summit. and in kyiv ukraine right now, which has been under siege since the very beginning. josh you first here as your position there on the ground in warsaw, how is that speech received there from your vantage point? >> alex, you could tell that president biden was trying to speak very distinctly to multiple audiences in this speech. he was trying to speak to the american people essentially saying look, this is going to be a long slog, thgs not going to be over quickly and that americans need to really prepare themselves for something that could go on for days, weeks, months, he even said decades. i think he was alluding to the broader conflict between authoritarianism and democracy. you see him trying to make clear this is a fight that people are going to have to have the fortitude to stick with. then you heard the president speaking to europeans who are scared about their o

lederman in warsaw, thank you so much for that. >>> joining me now, msnbc political contributor, ben rhodes, former deputy national security adviser, under president obama. and former u.s. mc chief of staff to europe, and we hope to get shannon pettypiece, digital reporter to join the conversation. ben, i'm going to start with you, what do you think the most important message is for the president to get across in his address today? >> well, i do think that this has been such an overwhelming month of news and images for americans back home in terms of digesting something that we have not seen on the european continent since world war ii. and i do think that he needs to kind of step back, and explain what is taking place, why it matters to us, what we're doing, but also where this is going. we've had sanctions imposed, troops deployed to the eastern flank, pouring weapons into ukraine, and i think what the world is looking for is what story president biden can tell about why democracy must prevail over authoritarianism. what we and our allies are going to do to help ukrainians on the front line of the flight. and also preparing peop