Summary
MSNBC`s continuing live coverage of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. CNN is reporting that the White House diarist, who`s in charge of compiling presidential records, recently testified that before the January 6 Committee and said that the Trump White House started sharing less information about his activities in the days directly preceding the riot. Today, there was a story saying that Ginni Thomas, the wife of Clarence Thomas, the associate justice of the Supreme Court, was involved in the hiring and firing decisions during Trump`s time in office.
Transcript
CHRIS HAYES, MSNBC HOST: And I also just want to thank you at home. Some of you have been watching since that very first night in 2013. I want to thank you for watching and for sticking with us, through thick and thin, through insurrection, plague, war and just about everything else under the sun. We are truly honored by and thankful for the trust you have placed in us.
That is "ALL IN" for this week.
THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW starts with Ali Velshi right now.
Good evening, Ali.
ALI VELSHI, MSNBC HOST: Good evening, Chris. Happy birthday to "ALL IN". And happy birthday to Rachel. You have a good night and we will talk to on Monday, my friend.
HAYES: You bet.
VELSHI: And thanks to you at home for joining us. I`m joining me once again from the Ukrainian city of Lviv.
But I want to start tonight in the Russian city of Belgorod. Belgorod is 25 miles north of Kharkiv. It`s on the other side of the country from where I am standing tonight. It is only about an hours drive away from Ukraine`s second largest city, that is Kharkiv.
Look at what happened in the Russian city of Belgorod today. Take a look at these missiles coming out of the sky and those helicopters flying really low and then at what appears to be an explosion. This was a fuel depot inside Belgorod, inside Russia.
Russia immediately claim today that Ukraine was responsible for this attack. It said it was a significant escalation and could complicate peace talks.
Ukraine refused to confirm or deny that it was responsible for the strike. But NBC News has confirmed that this was the handiwork of the Ukrainian armed forces. This is a bold move. This is Ukraine`s first known airstrike on Russian soil since this invasion began. And it`s just one item on a very long list of Ukrainian military victories in the last 24 hours.
The Pentagon says that the airport outside of Kyiv has been abandoned by Russian forces. Now, this was an incredibly important target for Russia, control of this specific airport would have allowed Russia to fly troops directly to the capital and not worry about getting stuck in the mud or roadblocks or running out of fuel, as their tanks have been doing.
But now, they have abandoned it. You can see it in this new satellite image from Maxar tonight. And you see those big piles of dirt everywhere? Those are protective breams that Russia built up. There are earthen walls in front of their military vehicles and tanks to keep them protected.
Well, now, Russia has rolled up and left the airport, all that`s left are their walls of dirt. Take a look at this. This was a small village east of Kharkiv today called Mala Rogan.
This town was previously under Russian control but Ukrainians are now taking that back as they mount a series of attacks across the country. Ukrainian soldiers surveyed damage to these Russian tanks. Another soldier found a set of Russian military documents that somehow stayed intact in all the rubble.
British intelligence sources said today that Ukraine is also retaken to villages south of Chernihiv, which are located along an important supply route to the nation`s capital. And take a look at this. This is the Kyiv suburb of Borodyanka today. Ukrainian soldiers held up their blue and yellow flag after soldiers abandon the city without a fight.
On the outskirts of Kyiv, a suburb called Buja, was one of the first be taken over by Russia. It`s been in Russian control since the end of February. The mayor of the Buja himself was reportedly injured last month, when the city came under heavy shelling.
Last month on Telegram, the mayor announced his city is now free. Ukraine has retaken control of Buja. He said the day will forever go down in history of their town.
A reporter for the Kyiv independent newspaper today said that Ukrainian soldiers are taking cities around Kyiv that such a clip that there is barely time to redraw the lines on his map. That same reporter said today that he believes we are in an unmistakable turning point in this war.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ILLIA PONOMARENKO, KYIV INDEPENDENT DEFENSE REPORTER: What we have is another face of the war. And it`s just -- we get it not from the Russian state. This is something just because of the very nature that has changed over the last week or so. And this is clear in terms of the battle of Kyiv. I personally believe that the battle of Kyiv is over with a Russian defeat.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VELSHI: With Russia on the retreat all around Ukraine`s capital, it is a good opportunity to take stock of what Russia has lost since this invasion began. U.S. officials believe that the Russian army has already committed more than half of its total combat forces of the entire country to the war in Ukraine. As many as 15,000 Russian soldiers are believed to have died, including at least seven high-ranking generals.
[21:05:07]
"The New York Times" is reporting today that Russia is running its military strategy out of Moscow with, quote, no central war commander to call the shots, end quote, which perhaps explains the haphazard nature of the invasion, from one of the largest militaries on planet earth.
"The Times" reports that with a majority of their military already deployed, Russia has now begun looking for reinforcements outside of Russia, drafting soldiers from the nation of Georgia, bringing in mercenaries from private military company. Putin has signed a decree to call up tens of thousands of conscripts.
The British Ministry of Defense said today that it is highly unlikely that Russia planned on tapping reinforcements this way indicates that the scale of the losses that it has sustained during the invasion is higher than anyone expected. But even with the significant setbacks, Russia continues to levy significant damage on some of the hardest hit areas of the conflict.
The eastern city of Mariupol continues to try to dig itself out of a devastating humanitarian crisis. Authorities estimate the damage up to more than ten billion dollars. More importantly, more than 100,000 civilians remain trapped inside that city.
The mayor said today that people are living in bomb shelters. They are rationing the small amount of food they have left. Today, a massive evacuation was planned for Mariupol. It was going to be led by the Red Cross.
But the convoy never made it. The Red Cross said they were not given assurances that it would be given safe passage. They were denied permission by Russian forces to deliver trucks of food and water and medicine. So, the convoy turned around. They are going to try again tomorrow.
NBC`s Gabe Gutierrez has this report on Ukrainians who`ve attempted to flee the humanitarian crisis in Mariupol.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
GABE GUTIERREZ, NBC NEWS CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): This is the heart stopping drive out of southeastern Ukraine, as seen from a car of Olga Kachukova.
How hard was the journey from Mariupol?
It was horrible, she says. The city is destroyed completely. These are more images from her neighborhood, now a ghost town. This man, who asked us not to show his face, says he was with Mariupol`s territorial defense. His hand shattered by what he tells was a Russian grenade.
Do you think that Mariupol might eventually fall?
No, never. But he says the Russians have captured his father and that he has not heard from him in almost two weeks.
Here in Vinnytsia, a humanitarian hub has sprung up, in among all places, a mall. Organizer Anna Charakova (ph) says it`s already helped more than 2,000 refugees.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: When people are coming, I understand them by my heart.
GUTIERREZ: Because she has been through it. She fled the Donbas region after Russia annexed Crimea in 2014.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I never saw my grandma again, she has died already.
GUTIERREZ: Her brother was a young boy when he rushed out, and the psychological toll it took still haunts her.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He didn`t did not talk for one year. So, when I saw these children, I could not even recognize what it could be in future, with a generation.
GUTIERREZ: Olga Lechenseko (ph) came here two weeks ago from the Donbas region, with 14 family members. The printing company she built from scratch was leveled.
I don`t know what to do, he says. Here, for so many, the future is uncertain. But they are holding on.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I just believe that it will be a victory for Ukraine. It couldn`t be another way.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
VELSHI: Just in the last few hours, the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has posted a new speech online. President Zelenskyy speaks several languages and most of his speeches tonight were delivered in Ukrainian.
But for this particular part of his remarks tonight, he delivered it in Russian, directed at the Russian people. Quote: Warn every such conscript and their parents that we do not need a new dead people here. Protect your children so they will not become the villains. Do not let them join the army. Do whatever you can to keep them alive at home, in their own home, end quote.
And then the next part was addressed to his own people. Quote: It is impossible to return to the previous life the way it used to be, even on those territories that we are giving back -- getting back from battles. We need to wait, wait until our land will be free of explosives. We have difficult battles ahead. It is still impossible to think that we have already passed all the tests.
We all want to win. But when it will be, everyone will see it. Everyone will feel that peace is coming, end quote.
Joining us now from Lviv is Sudarsan Raghavan, a correspondent at large for "The Washington Post". In his latest reporting, he talked to Ukrainian soldiers in a town near Kyiv as they try to push the Russians out.
[21:10:01]
Sudarsan, good to see you. Thank you for making time to be here tonight.
I want to talk first about what I said at the top of the show, the reports of two Ukrainian military helicopters striking a Russian oil depot. Doesn`t sound like that big of a deal given how many missile strikes and attacks there have been in Ukraine, but it really is.
SUDARSAN RAGHAVAN, CORRESPONDENT AT LARGE, THE WASHINGTON POST: It is a huge deal. No one expected this to happen at all and throughout this six weeks the Ukrainians have basically done a lot of defensive action and in the past week or so they started mounting counter offensives, on specific targets, in and around Kyiv. Very small and local counter offensives.
So, the fact that they went across the border took two helicopters and knock out this oil depot is extremely significant for several reasons. Chief among them is that, first of, all it shows that Ukrainians have the capability to go across and do something like this. And take the battle into Russian soil.
But at the same time, it also challenges Russia`s narrative of the war. The Russian propaganda machine has told the Russian people and the world that, basically, they are in control. That they have destroyed the Ukrainian air forces and the air bases.
And so this attack literally shows that the Russians were wrong and that they don`t have the war under control. And that Ukrainians will have the capability, the air capability, of doing such a massive hit.
VELSHI: Sudarsan, you reported this week from a town near Kyiv where Ukrainian forces were engaged in pushing the Russians back. I want to play a little bit of the video that accompanied your story. This is of a Ukrainian soldier who comes across a backpack abandoned by a Russian soldier.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh! He forgot his mo when he was running. That is not very useful.
Look! A machine gun. Yes, he was a machine gunner. You see? I`m just looking for something useful. Because that is how war works. That is useful.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VELSHI: Give us a sense, Sudarsan, of what that was about and how those Ukrainian troops you encountered are feeling about this war.
RAGHAVAN: Right. As you can see from this video, you can see the confidence he was feeling. He was extremely calm. He picked up his backpack and was looking for things of use. And you can really see it.
Now that event, in that town, there was shelling going on incessantly. So, the Russians were only about two miles away and they were shelling us and there was a chance to return the fire.
And the very next day to when one of our photographers went, there him there was also shelling there on Wednesday. So, between Thursday and Friday, the Russians are part of the airport. That town, by the way, is only five miles away from the airport. And you talked about it at the beginning of the program, the Hostomel airport that the Russians wanted to use to try and capture the capital of Kyiv.
So, in this town, the soldiers were extremely confident. They had just a week earlier, they managed to put the push the Russians out of the village. There was also sorts of guerrilla tactics, street fighting. They even destroyed a dam, they told me, nearby, which allowed the river that formed by the village to flood up. That prevented Russians forces from bringing reinforcement and from resupply and our soldiers inside the village. And they had to literally pushback and crossed the flooded river to get away from the Ukrainian forces.
So, yeah, it was a significant victory for the Ukrainians. But I think at that moment, no, one not a single soldier from early in the week had expected that the Russians would simply pick up and leave the airport and leave the entire areas around the capital.
VELSHI: And, Sudarsan, as you know, president-elect he has been making the rounds of western nations by teleconference, asking for things like tanks and jets and anti-aircraft weapons. Today, Germany agreed to let Ukraine have 56 infantry fighting vehicles that used to belong to East Germany. Australia agreed to send armored vehicles that Ukraine`s president specifically requested. And then we see what happened in Russia, with the helicopters, taking out the fuel depot.
[21:15:03]
What is your sense of how well-equipped Ukrainian forces are right now versus how well-equipped they`d like to be?
RAGHAVAN: Well, look, you have seen the results. Just with the equipment they have now they have managed to stall the Russian advance and even convince them that, at least at the moment going after the capital was not a good military strategy. And they managed to get the Russians to leave, to pull out. Just with the weapons they have. So, imagine with a lot more weaponry, what they could do.
The war is far from over. And what we are seeing now, is that it is still extremely unclear. We don`t know yet if the battle of Kyiv, for Kyiv, is entirely over. And we don`t know if what the Russians are doing, simply restructuring their military, restructuring things to the east, to focus on that instead. So, the war is still going and the Ukrainians are really calling for more and more weaponry, because they expect the fight to continue.
And with this -- by keeping the Russians out of the capital, it has also boosted their morale significantly. So, they are going to bring that confidence into whatever conflicts arrive in other parts of Ukraine, particularly in the east. And so, with more weaponry, that`s going to make them more capable of preventing the -- from seizing more parts of their country.
VELSHI: Sudarsan, we are in the same city. In the normal circumstances, you would be standing here with me. But it is 4:00 in the morning and there is a curfew. And we are actually under an air raid warning as we speak right now.
But we appreciate the hard work you have been doing, the great reporting you are doing. Sudarsan Raghavan is a correspondent at large for "The Washington Post" and we thank you for your time tonight.
We have much more ahead. Up next, the European embassy plays a surprise business to Ukraine`s parliament, highlighting the stakes for the rest of the world if Ukraine falls to Russian aggression. We will have more on that just ahead.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[21:21:26]
VELSHI: It`s just before dawn here in Ukraine, which means day 38 of Vladimir Putin`s invasion of Ukraine has begun. President Zelenskyy met with more European leaders, and this time, with European Parliament President, Roberta Metsola.
She also met with the parliament of Ukraine, and it was a full house. She came to Kyiv on a surprise visit that she announced just after arriving in the capital. She had a Ukrainian president discussed further reaching sanctions on Russia. She promised to increase assistance to Ukraine to help the country rebuild the cities that Putin`s army has leveled. And to help care for Ukrainians who have been forced to flee.
She confirmed that European parliaments support for Ukraine`s membership in the bloc saying, quote, Ukraine is Europe, more than ever before. She promised Europe would hold Russia accountable, and in an address to Ukraine`s parliament, she laid out what a Ukrainian victory means for all of Europe.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ROBERT METSOLA, PRESIDENT OF EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT: And here in Ukraine, these values are not buzzwords. They are being thoughtful because you know that without them, there is nothing else. The European Union was created to interlinked the destinies of the nation state of Europe, so that they could no longer engage in the kind of conflict that led in less than 30 years to two world wars.
The European Union is a project for peace, but even above that, it is a project about freedom. And let me say that Ukraine is Europe.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VELSHI: As the European Union stands united in support of Ukraine, Ukrainian diplomats engaged in day four of peace talks with Russia. This week, we`ve gotten a firmer grasp of what a settlement between Moscow and Kyiv might look like.
While Ukraine might still join the E.U., it`s offered to give up his aspirations of joining NATO, which happens to be the Ukrainian Constitution, by the way. And perhaps, for good reason, because not only has Putin demanded Ukraine`s exclusion from NATO, there are new and valid questions about whether the alliances aggressive enough in its response to the existential threat that Russia poses.
In a new and important article for "The Atlantic", titled quote, there is no liberal world order, Anne Applebaum writes, quote, unless democracies defend themselves, the forces of autocracy will destroy them. This liberal world order relied on the mantra of never again, unquote. Never again will there be genocide. Never again would large nations erase smaller nations from them up.
With the third, more brutal invasion of Ukraine, the vacuity of those beliefs was revealed. The Russian president openly denied the existence of illegitimate Ukrainian state.
Never again was exposed as an empty slogan, while a genocidal plan took shape in front of our eyes, right along the European Union`s eastern border. Other autocracies watched to see what we would do about it, for Russia is not the only nation in the world of that covets its neighbor`s territory, that seeks to destroy entire populations, that has no qualms about the use of mass violence.
There is no natural liberal world order, and there are no rules without someone to enforce them. Unless democracies defend themselves together, the forces of autocracy will destroy them, unquote.
Joining us now, Anne Applebaum, staff writer at "The Atlantic", the author of many important books, including "Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism".
Anne, thank you for joining us tonight.
And you and I have talked every few days for the last month. Few weeks ago, you remember, I was in Hungary a few weeks ago, and I relocated to Poland. We drove, and it`s a long drive. We stopped halfway to spend the night.
And it was Czeremcha (ph), Poland, the place you know. In the morning, my crew and I got up, and we drove 20 miles east to Auschwitz and Birkenau, because it seems pointing to understand that we got these slogans about never forget, and yet we forget. This is not the Holocaust, obviously.
But your references to the idea that NATO was formed and these alliances were formed under the idea that we shall never forget, it does start to ring a little bit hollow after seeing what we are seeing last month.
ANNE APPLEBAUM, STAFF WRITER, THE ATLANTIC: Yes, of course. It didn`t start here. Our failure to react to mass murders inside Syria, to the destruction of cities over their, to the blatant violation of the laws of war there, I think all of that gave Putin the idea that we just didn`t care about these things anymore, and we weren`t willing to defend them.
So it`s not of itself was starting from scratch here inside Ukraine, where we`re making up for lost time. Failure to react over a long period of time to these kinds of, these kinds of, you know, outrageous -- what we should have called outrageous behavior, I think is culminating -- is culminating now.
VELSHI: You write in your piece something interesting. You say, NATO can no longer operate as if it might someday be required to defend itself. It needs to start operating as it did during the Cold War, on the assumption that an invasion could happen at any, end quote.
This is the part that is surprised me. NATO was born for this. I would assume that there are a list of 30 immediate responses when things like this happen. But it seems like everybody got caught up on whether or not Ukraine as part of NATO, as opposed to the idea that a country has invaded another sovereign country.
APPLEBAUM: Yes, I mean, that`s a complicated question that meets unpacking. But, of course, of course, you know, the generals who run the NATO alliance, U.S. Army, Europe, which is the, you know, heart of the NATO alliance, of course, they have 1 million plans for all different kinds of attacks. Of course, they`re ready for anything.
But NATO is also a political alliance. You know, what Article Five says is the famous line in the NATO treaty, that essentially says, if one country is invaded, then everybody is required to respond. It doesn`t say how they should respond.
And, of course, how they should respond depends on politics. It depends on what people are willing to do. And there is always been a kind of assumption that things would happen, that we never found out whether they would happen or not.
But because it is a political alliance, it has always, its credibility was always dependent on when else was going on at the time. And frankly, for the last 30 years, ever since the break of the Soviet Union, most politicians and most NATO countries, and probably most voters inside most NATO countries, really assume that it was never going to be necessary again. We didn`t really need to think about it.
And all this talk about the Europeans need to have higher defense spending and so on, that was to, you know, that was a way of trying to get the moving. But really, the problem was political. They just did not see the need for it.
I think this war illustrates there is a need for thinking about deterrence, how it should work in the modern world and how we should be prepared to other parts of the world for the same kind of events.
VELSHI: This country has a lot of young politicians, we talk to them on a regular basis. And you can be forgiven for forgetting that Ukraine has political divisions. They have opposing political parties that in normal times fight with each other.
You write in your article, for decades now, we`ve been fighting a culture war between liberal values on the one hand and muscular forms of patriotism on the other. Ukrainians are showing us a way to have both. As soon as the attacks began, they overcame their many political divisions, which are no less better than ours, and they have picked up weapons to fight for their sovereignty, and their democracy, end quote.
I find that an interesting lesson that the rest of the world could pay very close attention to.
APPLEBAUM: Yes. You know, it`s a -- the somewhat false division that we`ve had for many years, you know, you believe in an open society and intolerance on the one hand, or you believe in some kind of gun-toting patriotism on the other. I mean, look what we`re seeing now is a young democracy, fighting with guns to protect and open society, to protect the right to choose leaders, to protect the goal of rule of law, to protect ethnic diversity.
Ukraine is a multilingual country.
[21:30:02]
People speak both Ukrainian and Russian. The president is Jewish. There is tolerance for other kinds of minorities in the country. And they want to keep that up. They want that kind of society. They want to protect it.
This is showing -- it`s a really good lesson for us, that there may be our system is worth fighting for. We don`t have to fight for it, militarily. But maybe we need to fight for it in other ways.
VELSHI: Uh-huh, Important point. We have to fight for it and why whatever way it`s threatened.
Anne Applebaum, your writing is always important, but at the way you lay out some ways out of this situation for the world, I think, it`s going to be incredibly useful for some of our viewers. We thank you for your time.
Anne Applebaum it`s a staff writer at "The Atlantic". She is the author of "Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism". Thank you for your time tonight.
We got much more to come from here in Lviv. Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[21:35:33]
VELSHI: Today, we saw anti war protests as far away as in Syria and India. These protesters held up the Ukrainian flag outside an Indian government building during a visit from Russia`s foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov. India, by the way, is making no effort to distance itself from Russia but some Indian people are.
In Turkey, we`ve seen antiwar protests all week as Ukrainian and Russian negotiators held peace talks. Earlier this week, in Prague, we saw several thousand Russian expats protest the Russian invasion.
But in Russia itself, if there were any protests this week, we did not hear about them. At the beginning of the war, Russians turned out on mass to protest the war. More than 15,000 protesters have been arrested to date.
So, what is the future of the Russian opposition? Is there one?
Well, last week, the de facto leader of Russian opposition movement, Alexei Navalny, was sentenced to nine years in a maximum security prison on ginned up charges by the Russian government. Navalny founded organization called the Anti-Corruption Foundation that put out reports and made videos documenting exactly how corruption in the Russian government was lining the pockets of Russian oligarchs and Vladimir Putin himself.
Russia`s charges against Navalny were that the Anti-Corruption Foundation was somehow a fraud itself and that Navalny was stealing money from it.
These charges were widely seen as a warning. Russia`s government essentially saying that if you investigate Russian corruption, you will end up in a penal colony. After his sentencing, Navalny was allowed to make a statement to the court. Authorities eventually cut off the feed. But let me read you a translation of how he started.
Quote: I want to use my last words to make an official announcement for those who think that the Anti-Corruption Foundation will stop, will finish, will slow down, will fall into decay. No. Not only will it not stop. But the anti-corruption foundation will become a -- will become global.
We will establish an international Anti-Corruption foundation which, of course, we`ll still focus on the swindlers and these from the Kremlin.
Over the course of last month, as the international community has levied sanctions against hundreds of Russian individuals, many of them are individuals whose abuses have been documented by Navalny`s Anti-Corruption Foundation for years.
So, on the one head, it has become significantly harder to voice opposition from inside Russia. But at the same time, the Russian opposition based outside of Russia has never had this much international support.
Joining us now is Vladimir Ashurkov. He is the executive director of Navalny`s Anti-Corruption Foundation.
Mr. Ashurkov, thank you for being with us tonight.
VLADIMIR ASHURKOV, ANTI-CORRUPTION FOUNDATION: Thank you for having me.
VELSHI: Let me ask you first of all, have you been in contact with Mr. Navalny and you know how he is doing?
ASHURKOV: Our communication is through a lawyer that visits him almost daily. For about an hour during which time Navalny scrambles handwritten notes to us or to his family and he reads whatever materials are sent to him, so it has been a triple of information back and forth. But we are in communication, yes.
VELSHI: Given the crack down on the media we have seen in Russia and the cutting off of that feed from Navalny sentencing, how much of what he is doing and what his movement is doing in Russia is seen by the Russian people?
ASHURKOV: We have millions of supporters. We have over 1 million people who subscribe to our YouTube channel, to our other social media. It has been made more difficult by the Russian government. You cannot really access Facebook or Twitter without resorting to have VPN connection from Russia. But we see that there is a lot of demand for truthful information from Russia. And we are one of the few independent outlets that are providing them.
VELSHI: And the reason I ask you that is because at the beginning of this war, we saw a number of anti war demonstrations throughout Russia. We seem to be seeing fewer of them in the past few weeks.
[21:40:03]
We have also seen the letter is Z show up on Russian spaces and buildings. That seems to be a symbol in support of the invasion in Ukraine. So, tell me how you think president Putin`s crackdowns are working, particularly on those people that disapprove of the war?
ASHURKOV: As you mentioned earlier, over 15,000 people were detained for peaceful protests and, naturally, this takes a toll on the people who are against the war and who would like to go out and protest against this brutal war, which was unprovoked, which was really unnecessary. And yes, we are seeing less people going to the streets.
Because there is also new legislation has been adapted by Russia, which makes it dangerous to voice against the war, even to name it a war.
VELSHI: Yeah, that`s quite incredible, that you can get in trouble just having this discussion, if you are in Russia. What do you think the future of the Russian opposition within Russia looks like now? And how do you expect that it is likely to involve evolve as the war continues?
ASHURKOV: To effect the change in Russia, it will take a combination of dissent in the elites -- these are people that have seen their lifestyles turned upside down. They have seen their homes decimated. They`ve seen their savings reduced to a fraction of what they`ve had., and a combination of dissent in elite and dissatisfaction among wide populations.
So, the average Russian has seen prices skyrocket, many foreign companies that provide the staples of day-to-day life, like McDonald`s and dozens of others, they have left Russia. So, life is not the same.
And once the costs of this invasion sunk in -- both the economic and human costs, in terms of over 10,000 dead Russian soldiers during this war -- this combination of dissent in all parts of society will inevitably lead to a political crisis that will in turn lead to change in how Russia`s run.
I don`t have a timeframe. I don`t have a scenario. But that is how things work politically.
VELSHI: Your organization, and the Anti-Corruption Fund, has been documenting Russian corruption and kleptocracy for years. Obviously, the sanctions have hit, as you`ve said, the elite, as they`ve been trying to -- hit for a while.
Have they had the effect that you`re hoping they have? Are these athletes, are these people who are wealthy? Are these people who are dealing with Putin feeling enough pressure to be able to fight back or even speak out about it?
ASHURKOV: We have been advocating personal sanctions against people persons involved in corruption and human rights abuse for years. And if the Western countries had been more belligerent in countering Putin`s assertiveness over the last years, we may have averted the catastrophe over the last month and a half.
We are where we are. And over the last month there has been an avalanche of personal sanctions. Sanctions, it`s a blunt instrument. It is not a silver bullet that will guarantee removal of Putin and Russia returning to the normal path of development. They don`t have a short term effect.
If you sanction an oligarch today, it is naive to expect that he will make an appointment with Putin and persuade him to end the hostilities in Ukraine. And that everything will go back to normal situations. But the sanctions create a motivation for people in the elite to come up with a plan to change things in Russia, because only after things in Russia change, will people who`ve amassed billions during the Putin era, can expect sanctions to be lifted.
VELSHI: Vladimir Ashurkov, thank you, you are the executive director of Alexei Navalny`s anti-corruption foundation, we appreciate your time tonight.
[21:45:08]
Up next, some new reporting tonight from the Trump White House starting restricting information that it put in the official record in the days ahead of January 6th. We will have details after this.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
VELSHI: There`s been no shortage of news this week concerning January 6th. Last night on this broadcast, we discussed new reporting the Justice Department has substantially widened in his investigation, to look beyond those who physically breached the Capitol that day, so the broader effort to overturn the 2020 election.
We know the committee has been looking to that but, now the Justice Department is.
Tonight, we`ve got some breaking news about the investigation into January 6th and the former president. CNN is reporting that the White House diarist, who`s in charge of compiling presidential records, recently testified that before the January 6 committee, and said that the Trump White House started sharing less information about his activities in the days directly preceding the riot.
[21:50:09]
Now, this is according to two sources with knowledge of the probe. I should note, NBC has not yet confirmed this reporting. And if you are wondering, what is a White House diarist, you`re probably not alone.
Every presidential administration has an official called a diarist, whose job is to keep a running list of the presidents meetings, phone calls and activities for posterity. The dearest worked with top White House staff to create this record, which has compiled monthly.
Now, CNN also reports other witnesses have told the committee that there was significantly less information being shared with those involved in White House record keeping during the same time period. With one source telling CNN that quote, White House record keepers appeared to be iced out in the days leading up to the January 6, end quote.
Joining us now is former United States attorney for the eastern district of Michigan, Barbara McQuade.
Barbara, thanks for being here. We have a lot to talk about here. I want to just focus on this diarist for a second.
These things are not just for posterity. They are the requirements particular the National Archives, about the type of record keeping that the White House is supposed to keep, which is why we`re all worried about those several hours of phone calls that are missing. This is abnormal, to say the least.
BARBARA MCQUADE, MSNBC LEGAL ANALYST: It`s abnormal, and it also violates the Presidential Records Act, Ali. There is a law passed after Watergate for the very purpose of memorializing what the president does, where he goes, who he talks to, who comes to visit him at the White House. That is all law. So to fail to comply with that law is a violation.
Now, here`s the rub. There is no violation. There is no enforcement mechanism in the Presidential Records Act. I still think that doesn`t mean that there is no consequence here.
It could be -- if this was an effort to conceal crimes -- there could be an obstruction of justice here. Or at the very least, this is the kind of evidence that the prosecutors referred to its consciousness of guilt. That is, I`m hiding my tracks, because I knew I`m doing something wrong, and I want to make sure that this is not known to others later.
VELSHI: And, of course, one of the things you and I have discussed over the years as that there is this sort of a triangulation that prosecutors do, right? They got a piece of information here, a piece of information there, so this one becomes important, that something had changed, whether or not they were abiding by the law and their requirements of the presidential records act, something in the days before January 6, according to this reporting of this virus to us testified, changed.
MCQUADE: You`re a quick study, Ali. Absolutely right. And so, if you can show a pattern that for the first three years and many days of his administration, the diarist was on the job. He was getting and information. He had access.
And suddenly, in the days leading up to this insurrection at the White House, he gets squeezed out and frozen out. Is there something didn`t want him to see? So, we don`t know the answer to that. The other possibility is, this function had taken over the White House, as people were jumping in the waning days of the administration.
But I think at least it raises some questions, why was it that the diarist was not given the same access that he had had for all these years before in the Trump administration?
VELSHI: Now, this is new reporting before that, a plan that we had was to talk to you about the revelations that continue to grow, concerning Ginni Thomas, the wife of Clarence Thomas, the associate justice of the Supreme Court.
Today, there was a story saying that she was involved in the hiring and firing decisions during Trump`s time in office. Recommending people to be hired, making suggestions that people be fired. Tell me about how that relates to the January 6th investigation?
MCQUADE: Well, it just brings much deeper into the inner circle of Donald Trump. You know, I think his text messages that we saw between her and Mark Meadows, they were so troubling, because they suggest a level of frequency of conversation, and a level of access that was not previously known.
I mean, she`s talking to him, urging action, urging strategy. She also happens to mention that she has sent another email to jarred, what could be chaired Kushner, maybe, maybe not. But that kind of access, I think, makes her an effective witness to what happened on January 6.
And so, you know, it`s concerning from a number of perspectives. Number one, does it create ethics issues and conflicts of interest for her husband on the Supreme Court? Perhaps. But even in her own right, I think that her own access there, her involvement in the January 6th rally, she was physically present there. She is very much inserted herself into this investigation, and I think it would be an obligation for the investigators here to talk to her about what she has did, what she saw, what she knew, and when the strategy was?
VELSHI: Barbara, good to see you as always. Thank you for joining us. Former U.S. attorney, Barbara McQuade.
When we come back, we`ve got a story about a dog who after miraculously surviving Russian attacks, was found by Ukrainian soldiers just outside of Kyiv. It`s a heartwarming journey to find a new home, up next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[21:59:17]
VELSHI: Some of the most enduring images of the Russian invasion of Ukraine are of refugees leaving everything behind as they flee war, except their pets.
But this beautiful, big black dog was somehow left behind in an abandoned village near Kyiv. The dog is a schnauzer named Bavaria, and was found by the Ukrainian soldiers who were inspecting homes in the village. They found him inside a house that have been damaged by shelling.
With the dogs full back story, and we are his original people, are we may never know. But now he is embarking on a new chapter. The soldiers brought the dog into Kyiv and into the arms of a woman named Olga, who volunteers with their regiment.
She said she`s always wanted a big, black dog. So, she`s happy, the dog is happy. And Olga`s cat has relocated to the top of the refrigerator.
Whether this will be Bavaria, the dog`s forever home, or whether he`s eventually be reunited with his original people, for now, this is a happy ending for everyone, except possibly the cat.
That does for us tonight. I will see you again in the morning fear from Lviv, on my show, "VELSHI". Celebrity chef-turned-activist Jose Andres will join me from Kyiv. That`s tomorrow morning at 8:00 a.m.
And now it is time for "THE LAST WORD". Jonathan Capehart is in for Lawrence tonight.
Good evening, my friend.