Summary
Ukrainian cities facing critical shortages. Russian missiles strike Lviv. Russian forces closing in on city of Lviv. Russian forces bombard Ukrainian capital.
Transcript
ARI MELBER, MSNBC HOST: We will be covering our MSNBC but we'll be balancing the war coverage on air, which means there's another way you can join me on Monday.
Take a look, a live YouTube discussion of Judge Jackson's hearings. I'll be joined by a special guest there, Law Professor Melissa Murray. It's youtube.com/msnbc. Again, if you go right now to youtube.com/msnbc, or to my Twitter page @arimelber, you can find the link. It sets a reminder. Technology is cool. And you join us for that coverage Monday even if the world is doing other things on air.
That's it for me. THE REIDOUT with Joy Reid starts now.
JOY REID, MSNBC HOST: Good evening, everyone. We begin THE REIDOUT tonight with the latest on the humanitarian disaster in Ukraine. The United Nations is raising concerns about the 6.5 million people who are internally displaced and the 13 million people currently in regions hit hardest by the war in Ukraine. Cities like Mariupol and Sumy are facing what the U.N. described as critical and potentially fatal shortages of food, water and medicine.
We're still learning more about the drama theater in Mariupol that Russia bombed despite clear markings that children were inside. 130 people have been rescued but there are 1,300 people are in the shelter.
As many flee cities like Mariupol, more than 9,000 today alone, they are heading west, but the war appears to be following them. In Lviv, 40 miles from the border with Poland, local officials said that several missiles destroyed buildings at an aircraft repair facility. Russia is claiming that the site is Ukrainian military infrastructure, a detail that NBC News cannot confirm.
Residents of Lviv are scared that the war will soon be at their doorsteps.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Now, when you sleep and in 2:00 a.m., these like; sirens turn on and it's scary. It's scary now because you understand that now in Lviv, it's like a calm, it's peaceful situation but we don't know if it will be tomorrow.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
REID: But the city remains resilient. Take this powerful photo of empty strollers in front of a Lviv city hall. There is 109 of them, one for every child killed since the start of the war, according to the Ukrainian government.
And President Zelenskyy is making an appeal to Russian mothers claiming that 13,000 Russian soldiers have died in the war, telling them to check on their sons and asking them to love their children more than they are afraid of their government.
This as Putin continues to shamelessly target civilians shelling residential buildings and even a kindergarten in Kyiv.
NBC's Richard Engel was at the site of that attack this morning.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
RICHARD ENGEL, NBC NEWS CHIEF FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT: The bomb landed right in the middle of this complex damaging all the apartments around, also a school, a supermarket, a kindergarten. The death toll could have been far worse.
And this is happening every day now, not just in Kyiv but also in Kharkiv, in Mariupol, in Chernihiv, where civilians are being attacked without any military targets in the area.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
REID: Asked about his own safety today, Kyiv's mayor says no one is safe.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CHUCK TODD, MSNBC HOST: How concerned are you that you're a target, you personally are a target of Russian forces for kidnapping purposes, propaganda or worse? And how much protection do you have?
VITALI KLITSCHKO, MAYOR OF KYIV: Actually, nobody have the safety in our city. Nobody has safety in our country. It's every citizen of our country is target.
I don't care about me. I care if the citizens give me the rights to defend the interest of people in my hometown.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
REID: And tonight, the city of Kyiv announced that since the beginning of the war, 222 people have died there, including four children.
Meanwhile in the port city of Odessa, Russian warships on the Black Sea are visible from the coast. 80 years ago during the war against the actual Nazis, the city, then part of the Soviet Union, could see German warships approaching. They prepare for the German's arrival fortifying the city and lining it with sandbags. And today, they're doing the exact same thing but it's their neighbor attacking this time.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes, we're quite safe because Odessa has a very brave history. You know that, here, it was during the war, there was a civil counterforce, not military but civilian citizens of Odessa. That's why we are brave. We're not afraid of this.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
REID: Odessa, the third largest city in Ukraine, is crucial for Putin's strategy of taking the southern half of the country, putting more than 100,000 civilians at risk.
[19:05:01]
Meanwhile, Russia has spent the past few days claiming that any targeting of civilians is fake news. And today, the Russians, once again, wasted the U.N.'s time by spouting the conspiracy theory that there are bio weapons labs in Ukraine. Here is how U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Linda Thomas- Greenfield responded.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
LINDA THOMAS-GREENFIELD, U.S. AMBASSADOR TO THE UNITED NATIONS: Last week, we heard from the Russian representative a tirade of bizarre conspiracy theories. This week, we're hearing a whole lot more where that came from. Russia has repeatedly, repeatedly accused other countries of the very violations it plans to perpetrate.
We continue to believe it is possible that Russia may be planning to use chemical or biological agents against the Ukrainian people.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
REID: With me now from Lviv is NBC News Correspondent Cal Perry and Mariupol City Council Member Maksym Borodin.
Cal, I'm going to start with you because it doesn't appear clearly that Russia is waging war efficiently but they sure are waging it everywhere.
CAL PERRY, NBC NEWS CORRESPONDENT: Yes. And I think what we're seeing, and we heard from the State Department today, because the military seems bogged down in places like Kyiv, in places outside of Mariupol, what is happening is they're punishing these civilian populations by indiscriminately shelling them.
Here in the western part of the country, we woke up today to the sound of air raid alarms. There was that airstrike near the airport. At least four cruise missiles striking there at about 6:30 in the morning.
Interesting to note, Joy, the air defense system here in the west is still functioning pretty well. At least two of those rockets were shot out of the sky. You can see there, that's the aftermath that we witnessed this morning. A smoke rose over the city. Interestingly enough, the government not confirming what the target is, not letting journalists near to that site, an indication, I think, of the operational security concerns they have on the ground, as they anticipate possibly more airstrikes.
I want to take you to the city of Mariupol. But before I do, this is video we've gotten in in the last 90 minutes and I want to warn our viewers it is graphic. But it is important to show because, of course, this is where we are seeing exactly what you are alluding to, which is the punishment of a civilian population.
We know that in this video some of these folks were underground three or four days, bodies, as you can see, strewn into the streets. And as we've been talking about a situation so desperate for people there that we're not seeing the ability to bury loved ones. We're not seeing the ability to carry out funerals. The last desperate gasp of any city are these slit trans (ph) mass graves. And while these videos are difficult to look at, it's important that we show exactly what is happening on the ground.
A little good news in the city of Sumy today, we saw the first humanitarian corridor that actually functioned properly, some folks getting out. And the U.N. saying they were able to coordinate with both the Ukrainian officials and Russian officials to get both food into that city and water, they said, restored to 50,000 residents.
It's important, right? You have hundreds of thousands of residents in these cities still bunkered down, still in basements. And we should remind our viewers, of course, that it is the elderly, it is folks who cannot flee that are stuck in these cities, and it is, of course, unaccompanied children, as well, Joy.
REID: Wow. City Council Member Borodin, Mariupol is your city. What are you hearing out of there, including we are increasingly everyone concerned about this theater where 1,300 people were shielding themselves from the blasts? Do you have any updates on that?
MAKSYM BORODIN, MARIUPOL CITY COUNCIL MEMBER: Mariupol Drama Theater is only piece of the big terroristic puzzle Putin has made from Mariupol. It's terrible what happens there now. My friends who go -- who like to go out from the city yesterday is telling terrible stories about body which no one can get away or bury and dogs are eating them. It's terrible. And people most of the time must stay in the ceiling because of bombing from the planes and because of the non-stop shelling.
Putin destroyed Mariupol today. Putin terrorist troops seem to be saying to all the world, look, this will happen to everyone who doesn't submit to us.
So, as we can see Putin's Russia only like anyone aggressive. They only understand one rule, if we don't get him in the (INAUDIBLE), he goes further. And it's not about only Ukraine. He goes for Europe, not any chances he stops. So, if Ukraine today don't get real help, we need jet planes, we need offense systems, not only the hand held systems but special systems so we can close our sky because they don't want to help us.
[19:10:12]
They're afraid Putin starts World War III but anyway.
But, anyway, this war has already started. So, we need to stop Putin now because later it will be hell.
REID: And we're looking at all of these horrific images and heroic images, really, of Ukrainians trying to save lives inside of these battered cities.
And, City Council Member Borodin, what is the status of places where people are fleeing and even, as you said, there are places where people can't flee, they have to continue to shelter, what is the status? How much food is available? How much water is available? Can food and water and resources be brought in?
BORODIN: The situation is catastrophic. I can't tell you the real situation because every people have different situations. Someone have some food stores but some don't have food for weeks and there are no electricity and there are no heat. And the only water they can get is water when they melt the snow. But now there is no snow but there is frost on the streets, minus six or minus seven.
And without heat, you understand it's real genocide. Putin held the city only to make -- to punish Mariupol, which stands from the 2014, and he need to show that picture of liberation from the fascist Mariupol. But there are no fascists. There are only civil people who want to live on their land and who want to be Ukrainian, not any others.
REID: Yes. Let me go back very quickly, Cal. I understand you're hearing noises around you. Tell us what you're hearing and what you're seeing.
PERRY: Yes. If I hear it again, we'll just bump off camera here. So, the sound of two explosions in just the last five minutes, as you were conducting that interview, pretty distinct sounds. I can't tell you how far away. They could be rockets being shot out of the sky. We should caution our viewers that.
We don't know when we hear those booms, what they are, only to say that here in the city of Lviv, we saw our the first airstrikes yesterday morning. So, there was an anticipation that we could see more, that this could be a widening of the air campaign.
But, again, in just the last five minutes, two distinct sounds of what we think are explosions or, as I said, this could be air defense systems, way too early to tell but we're just letting you know what we've heard.
REID: Yes. And I want to go back to you City Council Member Borodin. I understand that the request for NATO to provide, you know, air cover, they're not going to do that. Poland has been reluctant to even send the planes over that they're willing to give, directly send them across. What the U.S. has offered so far in terms of military assistance, is that enough, or what pleas would you make to your European counterparts and also to the United States? What do you need know?
BORODIN: At first, we need these planes. The jet planes which Poland, which can provide to us, but U.S. government says it's too dangerous to give us planes. Why dangerous to give planes if they give us Javelins and they give us any other systems? Because the most problem of why Mariupol today is totally bombed is all about we don't have planes to shut down the Russian planes. And if we get these planes, it will be easier than now. And we need not only hand held anti-air system. We need special anti-air systems.
And you can't provoke Russia more because now they're totally destroyed in Ukraine. And if you look to today's Putin, not only criminal war crime Putin, their entire nation of Russians are poisoned with war propaganda. So, they support Putin's strategy and it's all about propaganda. So, we need to have weapons to get offensive from them. If we don't do this, next would be Europe.
REID: Yes. City Mariupol Council Member Maksym Borodin, these images are horrific. We are thinking all of you all and thank you for spending time with us this evening. Cal Perry, we're going to come back to you. Please keep us alerted if you hear or see anything else and we will come right back to you.
[19:15:03]
So, thank you, my friend, I appreciate you.
Up next on THE REIDOUT, Putin's MAGA-style rally amid reports that many in the crowd were ordered to attend. How much support does Putin really have for his deadly war? Masha Gessen, who recently returned from Russia, joins me next.
Also, as Ukrainians courageously defend their country, how far will Putin go? And are we looking at another Fallujah?
Plus, the China factor, Putin has nowhere else to turn for help. But the U.S. is warning China to stay out of it.
And a preview of a historic week, the confirmation hearings for Ketanji Brown Jackson to become the first black woman on the Supreme Court.
THE REIDOUT continues after this.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
REID: Take a look at this. These are the pictures that Vladimir Putin wants Russians to see as he wages an illegal, misguided and increasingly costly war in Ukraine. That is Putin himself holding a MAGA-style stadium rally in Moscow this morning to galvanize Russian support for what he's euphemistically calling a special military operation but which the rest of the world knows as the mass slaughter of civilians.
[19:20:13]
The rally was meant to celebrate the also illegal annexation of Crimea eight years ago. But, of course, it was just more pro-war propaganda, carefully staged with banners touting the lie of the so-called denazification of Ukraine. Despite the crowd's apparent enthusiasm, many attendees said they had been pressured into attending by their employers, according to the BBC.
Likewise, students said they were given a day off from lectures if they attended. And some didn't even know that the event was dedicated in part to supporting the war in Ukraine.
Putin's big performance also hit a snag when state TV channels abruptly cut away from his speech to show an earlier performance by a musical artist who's sort of a Russian nationalist ripoff of Bruce Springsteen.
This comes as Kremlin propagandists are working overtime to sell the war to the Russian people, while also minimizing its significance. And they're using extremists from this country as proxies to bolster their message.
For instance, they have been repeatedly broadcasting the words of House Republican Madison Cawthorn, who called President Zelenskyy a thug in a recently unearthed video. And they continue to embrace Tucker Carlson, who has emerged as America's most visible champion of their cause.
Carlson is such a hit among Putin supporters that a young security worker in Siberia is translating and dubbing his show for a Russian audience,receiving 24 million hits.
But the bigger problem is what Russian TV doesn't cover, given what's really going on. As Masha Gessen wrote in "The New Yorker" earlier this month: "There is no ongoing live coverage, no acknowledgement that what's happening is extraordinary, even as Russian bombs fall on Ukraine's residential areas and the Russian economy into a tailspin."
Gessen writes: "The nice thing about a war that's not a war is that it's easy to look away."
With me now is Masha Gessen, staff writer for "The New Yorker" and author of "Surviving Autocracy."
And, Masha, I know that you recently came back from Russia, and I am dying to know what you saw. The folks you talked to, what do they know about what's happening in Ukraine?
MASHA GESSEN, "THE NEW YORKER": I think maybe it's more important to think about what they don't know. They don't know that it is a massive war operation.
And what's really striking is that even people who are -- and this is a vanishingly small number, right? But even the vanishingly small number of people who are still consuming independent media, which have been blocked by Russian authorities -- it takes a huge effort to use a virtual private network to use -- to see independent media, even they don't quite get the picture that television viewers in the West get, right?
There isn't as much footage. There isn't as much detail of the just -- just this unending carnage. And if people watch Russian TV, which most Russians do -- most Russians at least have it in the background -- there are two things that are happening.
One is that they're being told that Russia is waging his special military operation to restore peace or to put a stop to violence or denazify Ukraine, depending on who you listen to. And -- but the biggest thing is how they're being told this, which is in this very sort of routine tone.
The newscasts at the top of the hour, it's still five or six minutes, right? You hear a story about Ukraine, and then the next story is a Romanian fighter plane went down while on a rescue mission, seven people died.
And so it's in the context of things that happen in the rest of the world all the time. There isn't this -- the sense that you get in the rest of the world, which is that the world is on fire. The one place you don't get it is in Russia.
REID: And it's interesting.
In your piece, you talk about someone being arrested on the street and people just like not even noticing, right, and this sort of -- it's sort of everything is sort of blandetized, where no one really sees what's happening around them.
And I was just talking with my team earlier today that it is as if FOX News was the only thing you could watch on TV, there was nothing else, well, a lot of people here wouldn't know what was going on in Ukraine, right? They would see a certain blinkered view that was what FOX News told them, that's what's happening. If that was it, if there was no other option, that's kind of the way I kind of think of it.
Is that we should think, that essentially people are being fed a very selective view of the world. And so, for the most part, lots of people believe it.
GESSEN: I think, yes, for the most part, lots of people believe it.
But, of course, imagine that you're watching FOX News, and then you're going out and seeing empty store shelves. Things that were there yesterday or no longer there. Like, today, social media that are still coming out of Russia are showing shelves that are entirely empty where were sanitary products used to be, right, which is such an essential sort of element of human dignity that came with life after the Soviet Union, and that just is disappearing again.
[19:25:24]
And, right now, you're showing all these stores that have shuttered, right, from Ikea, to McDonald's, to H&M, and Zara, not just the luxury goods that you're showing, but all the things that sort of were -- made up the landscape of everyday life.
All of that is disappearing. But then, when you watch Russian TV, what you're hearing is, it's a special military operation, but also that the government is taking measures to stabilize the economic situation, it's just another small period of hardship, and we're going to recover.
And Russians who have survived a lot of periods of hardship, right, kind of figure, OK, this will end too.
REID: Then I guess the question would be, is there some way it's breaking through?
Because we sort of tend to now think of the world as sort of the people who are in urban centers, more educated people, people who have lots of social media have more information, and we are seeing people using Telegram and people using those kind of ways to get information.
Is there enough of a critical mass of that information getting through, when even their ambassador to the U.N. is saying the vision -- the images we all see our fake? See, they're claiming in the U.S. that those things are fake.
Is there enough social media breakthrough to change anything or to destabilize in any way the Russian regime, the Putin regime?
GESSEN: In a word, no, and for two reasons.
One is that there's not enough -- they have just -- they have blocked Facebook. They have blocked Instagram. They're about to block YouTube, I'm pretty sure, right? So there just isn't -- there isn't the social media in which messages could get through.
But more than that, people don't believe what they see when they do accidentally come across it. And we're seeing that from people who are communicating, trying to communicate with their relatives, Ukrainians who are trying to communicate with their relatives in Russia, who are saying, that's fake, you're lying, when they're talking to their own family members who are actually living through it.
But more than anything else, this assumption that the truth can somehow destabilize the Putin regime fundamentally misunderstands the nature of the regime. It's a totalitarian society at this point. It is a matter of survival for Russians to buy into the picture of the universe that state television is broadcasting to them.
And by buy into, I don't mean to perform something that they don't believe. I need to actually give up the ability to form their own opinion, right? So this idea that you could -- if somehow you just got somebody to see something, it would magically do something to the Putin regime is a basic misunderstanding of how the country works.
REID: You know, what you have described to me sounds a lot like North Korea, and it's pretty frightening.
Masha Gessen, thank you. I hope you will come back very soon, because I have so many more questions. I could do this all night. Thank you so much. Really appreciate you.
And still ahead: With Russian forces poised on the outskirts of Kyiv, the battle for Ukraine is about to enter the bloodiest phase of combat yet, urban warfare.
I will talk to a military expert and a journalist who both experienced this nightmare scenario firsthand about what to expect.
We will be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[19:33:16]
REID: Since the start of the invasion, Russia has had its sights set on overtaking the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv.
So far, Ukrainian forces have repelled Russia's advances, but now Russian soldiers are surrounding the city for what's likely to be an all-out assault on the capital. Putin is gambling that his ill-prepared soldiers will somehow be able to overtake the Ukrainians by force in street-by- street combat.
But he could be in for a big surprise. Just ask our own far better trained and much better equipped military how that went for them in the fall of 2004, when a U.S.-led coalition tried to retake Fallujah in Iraq. It was the bloodiest battle of the entire Iraq War. The insurgents had prepared fortified defenses throughout the city.
Buildings and vehicles were booby-trapped, and streets were blocked off to corner our forces. It took 46 days to kill or capture nearly 3,000 insurgents in a city about a 10th the size of Kyiv, at a cost of some 110 coalition forces, leaving hundreds more wounded and thousands of innocent civilians dead.
Joining me now is Sudarsan Raghavan, correspondent at large for "The Washington Post" who is in Kyiv, and retired Army Major John Spencer, chair of urban warfare studies with the Madison Policy Forum and author of "Connected Soldiers: Life, Leadership, and Social Connections in Modern War."
Thank you both for being here.
I want to start with you, Sudarsan.
Give us a sense of what's going on in Kyiv, because it does feel like the war is coming in that direction.
SUDARSAN RAGHAVAN, "THE WASHINGTON POST": Definitely.
People who are extremely concerned. They're preparing for the worst. They're seeing what's happening in other cities around Ukraine that have been heavily bombed. And they're worried that could easily happen here in Kyiv.
So, yes, I mean, the Russians right now, as you said, they are outside but I wouldn't say they have surrounded the capital, by any means. They're still north of the capital here, northwest, and they're kind of pushing in from the northeast. But the southern routes are still open.
[19:35:11]
What we're seeing now is a slowdown in the Russian advance. The Russians were trying to have -- to wage a conventional war. But, instead, what they found was a very well-sustained insurgency, where the Ukrainians have been using guerrilla-style tactics to stop the Russian advance, particularly in a city that is on the northern edges of Kyiv, which is -- what's called Irpin.
And the Russians are still there now, and they're trying to push. But, definitely, when you when you look at the mind of the Russian army and the resources it has, certainly, many analysts, many people believe that, at some point, they could very well push into the capital.
REID: And, Major Spencer, I want to bring you in here. We had you on before to talk about this.
And I want you to get into a little bit more detail, because, in the case of Iraq, when -- by the time the United States tried to get into Fallujah, the people there had had time to plan what they were going to do, to plan how they were going to repel. They understood what our forces were capable of. They understood what our forces were willing to do. And they had time to plan a response.
In this case, we were a much better prepared armies. We were a far superior army to Russia, and it was 46 days of hell. So, what, in theory, would these Russian forces be looking at if they do enter the capital?
MAJ. JOHN SPENCER (RET.), MADISON POLICY FORUM: I mean, to be honest, Joy, it will be night and day to what we experienced in Fallujah, what I experienced in Baghdad myself.
They will face a nightmare on every street. Just to be clear, the world's best military, we penetrated Fallujah. On night one, we were sitting in the middle of it. Russia is going to hit a wall, a concrete wall of Ukrainians. I mean, there are thousands of them, and highly trained Ukrainian military backed by the best tank-killing machines in the world that we provided them.
Russia approaches a meat grinder, and they know it, and they're scared.
REID: And so what would be the case for doing it?
Because it does seem to me that they have faced a very determined population who have made it clear they don't want them there. They don't want to be occupied. They don't want them there. We faced that, obviously, in Iraq, but, also, Iraq had a government that people didn't even support.
So they weren't fighting for that government. There's nobody that was going to fight for that government. In this case, they are going to fight for that government. They are going to fight for each other. It seems to me -- well, I guess I keep saying this -- it doesn't seem sane to try to take the city, but it seems that they are determined to do it.
What would be the case for trying?
SPENCER: Absolutely. I think they're going to -- yes, they're going to attempt it.
So, Joy, they have -- they don't have to take the city. They're not trying to get all of the enemy out, like we did in Fallujah, based -- the Iraqi government wanted Fallujah back. They had an election coming up. Putin doesn't want to take Kyiv like that. He just needs to get to the middle and raise the Russian flag and call a win.
That's not what's going to happen. And you hit the nail on the head. What do they not have? The will to fight. What do Ukrainians have? They have the will to pay the ultimate price for their country.
Once you lose the will to fight, which we have seen the Russians do, you have lost the war. He's already lost.
REID: The question then, Sudarsan, is, how many people are going to end up in body bags before it's all over?
Because everyone, every expert that we have had on, from Major Spencer on, all have made it very clear that Russia is not winning tactically this war. It is a disaster for them. But they are killing a lot of people. And it seems to me that, at this point, killing a lot of people is the point.
Is that what you're feeling and seeing on the ground?
RAGHAVAN: Well, first of all, I really hope Kyiv doesn't turn into Fallujah. I have seen -- I was there in Iraq at the time, and I have seen the aftermath of Fallujah, where 60 percent of the city has been destroyed -- was destroyed, and there were so many civilian casualties at that time.
Kyiv is an extremely beautiful city. It's got an amazing opera house and an amazing central square and all these beautiful churches around the city.
Definitely, look, people are preparing for this, though. On every street here, you are seeing fortifications, checkpoints. People are -- the highways are sandbagged. They're covered with tires. There are trucks and metro trains -- and subway trains blocking pathways for potential Russian entry.
And, at many of these places, you're seeing anti-tank guns, anti-tank rockets. And, yes, I mean, they have extremely dedicated (AUDIO GAP) Javelin missiles and the British-supplied NLAW anti-tank missiles.
So, yes, they're extremely prepared. And, also, the people -- about a third of the population, I would say, have already fled the city. So, right now, when you're seeing attacks, especially on civilian areas, bombardments, the casualties are going to be a lot higher, but the fact is, a lot of people have left.
[19:40:04]
But there still remains a considerable amount of people here. And they're all living in areas that are next to fortifications. And so the entire city is under defense. So they're -- the concern here, of course, is that, if the Russians do enter, you could see a bloodbath of sorts, especially amongst the civilian population.
REID: And, Major Spencer, then the question is, the fact that the government has stayed in Kyiv, that they are still there, that they're still operating out of there, that the president is still showing himself even outside, saying, we're here, what does that portend for how this horrible culmination could look?
SPENCER: I mean, one, I agree with you that we're going to see -- if Russia attempts this, very awful civilian casualties, more, like, than we have ever seen.
And it's a war crime, what he's doing.
REID: Yes.
SPENCER: But I -- Zelenskyy is the key to everything. Again, soldiers don't fight for -- because you pay them or force them to. They fight for leadership like that, for a cause. Zelenskyy is everything.
But the Ukrainians have to be able to -- prepared to take the shelling that Russia do -- they're cowards. They're going to try to bomb into submission. But the game here is that Ukraine is preparing for the Battle of Stalingrad, the Battle of Berlin, and Russia still thinks they're us and preparing for the attack on Baghdad in 2003.
I mean, it's not just my experience. It's my research. Ukraine has figured out what will win. And they're doing it. An urban defense is always going to be stronger than attempting to attack it.
REID: Yes.
And the whole world, minus a few strange and weird outliers, are with them, with Ukraine.
Sudarsan Raghavan, John -- Major John Spencer, thank you both very much.
And up next, a pivotal moment in U.S.-China relations, as President Biden tries to talk President Xi out of helping Russia in its brutal war on Ukraine.
More on today's incredibly high-stakes discussion -- after this.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[19:46:12]
REID: Putin's invasion of Ukraine has been resoundingly repudiated by the majority of the planet, except for a few places that have their own loose relationship with democracy.
China, which has its own aspirations of communist domination over Taiwan, has been Russia's biggest ally. One Chinese government official called Russia its most important strategic partner, with a friendship that is ironclad.
Well, today, President Biden held a two-hour call with China's leader, Xi Jinping, following reports that China has expressed a willingness to provide Russia both military support and financial backing in the wake of sanctions that are crippling its economy.
A senior administration official told reporters that Biden warned China's leader that there would be consequences if that happened. The call didn't seem to satisfy those concerns.
According to the German magazine "Bild," Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov was allegedly on a flight headed to Beijing on Thursday, but the plane turned around midway and flew back toward Moscow. NBC News has not been able to confirm that reporting.
China has refused to criticize Russia, but has called for dialogue.
And joining me now is Nayyera Haq, host of "The World Tonight" on BNC News and a former State Department senior adviser.
Nayyera, it's always great to see you.
So, let's talk first about the incentives that China has. So China says Russia is its good friend. Let's put up the graphic of how much business they actually do with Russia vs. how much they do with us. The E.U. is actually the person, the entity in the world they do the most business with, $828 billion, vs. $755.6 billion with the United States. We all know there are so many products made in China in the United States.
They only do about $146 billion with Russia. What on earth would be their incentive to side with this country that's essentially deteriorating?
NAYYERA HAQ, FORMER STATE DEPARTMENT SPOKESPERSON: Some of it is strategic, Joy, the idea that Russia and China were together against the West, Russia had been supporting China in its expansion over in the East.
And now what President Xi really has to try and thread the needle is between maintaining a relationship with its largest neighbor, saying that it is still a friend of Russia, while also condemning the attacks in Ukraine and not being seen as supporting that.
Now, China does have a significant amount of U.S. debt. It is technically - - its $1 trillion in U.S. Treasuries means it is the largest foreign bank for the U.S. government. So they have leverage over us. They also have the leverage of the U.S. takes more from China than we give to them in terms of imports of all of the consumer goods.
The super -- the semiconductor shortage is largely because of supply chain and production issues in China. So they have deeply embedded economic ties with the United States. So they think they -- if they thread this needle, right, they can play both sides, they can keep the trade with United States and keep their partner, Russia, happy.
REID: Let's talk about just sort of the shifts, because it has seemed to me that their support hasn't been full-throated for what Putin is doing.
And this is from "The Washington Post." "Among shifts in wording, well, Xi's decision to call the invasion a war for the first time when speaking with his German and French counterparts last week, a departure from weeks of officials describing the war the way that Putin wants it described, as a special military operation or a situation."
They did sort of stand to the side in the U.N. when the rest of the world condemned Russia. But do you detect any movement in China's direction toward being with the rest of the world, rather than being with this rogue country?
HAQ: Their abstention at the United Nations was significant.
Now, it's just -- again, it's just saying that they're not going to participate. But they usually -- when it came to the Syrian war, even when it came to the invasion of Crimea, they would generally support full- throated defense of Russia.
But what they're looking at is what Putin is also looking at, that his invasion of Ukraine is not going well. He has not been able to take over the country, as he suspected and as the Chinese and -- probably been discussing with him after the Olympics, thinking that, OK, just wait until the Olympics are over, then start your invasion.
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So, now China is looking at potentially being on the losing side of this. And they don't want to be stuck with having to help Putin save face on the world stage, or get ostragized -- ostracized, rather, from all of these economic opportunities.
So, the threat of consequences that the United States has laid on China would be economic sanctions. And that's something that deeply worries the Chinese, again, as the entire world is looking to come out of this global pandemic.
REID: In a way, China -- and I have said this before -- is sort of, in a sense, potentially the winner in the game of thrones if Russia is no longer a superpower.
And I think it's clear they are not any longer. They have exposed themselves by doing this invasion, this disastrous invasion. But China then sort of moves up in the world, right? I mean, the United States government has already assessed that they are our biggest threat/competitor.
In a sense, would Russia (sic) benefit from the end of Russia's top-tier status?
HAQ: There used to be a moment in U.S. diplomacy where it was all about -- especially post-World War II, you will hear about the liberal order and working towards Europe and building up those alliances.
And around the Clinton administration, fast-forward through Obama, you started hearing about a reset or a pivot to Asia. Now, whether or not that was ever successful is another debate, but that was because there was a recognition that China is looming large on the world stage, right, that they are the ones who have built trade with Southeast Asia.
There's the constant threat of their military in the South China Sea. So this does end up being, if they can play both sides right, if they pull away from Russia just enough to keep the United States happy, you have a hermetically sealed Soviet era-type Russia, which never had the economic power China did.
And, suddenly, China now dominates the East against a unified West.
REID: Yes, interesting. Very interesting.
Nayyera Haq, my friend, thank you very much. Always appreciate the opportunity to speak with you.
And coming up next: The confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson begin on Monday.
What to expect -- next on THE REIDOUT. Stay right there.
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REID: Ketanji Brown Jackson is poised to become the first black woman to serve as a Supreme Court justice. That is a big deal, historic, monumental.
Now, of course, the confirmation hearings come first, and that begins on a Monday. But it won't be her first time. Judge Jackson has been confirmed by the Senate on a bipartisan basis three times, twice as judge and once to serve on the U.S. Sentencing Commission.
Born in D.C., but raised in Miami, she cites her work as a federal public defender as an influence on her own judicial philosophy. Jackson went to Harvard for undergrad and law school. One of her interests was theater, even performing a role as a doo-wop girl in "Little Shop of Horrors" with future comedian Mo Rocca. True story.
It's also where she met her future husband, Patrick Jackson, then a premed student. Ketanji Brown Jackson now sits on the federal appeals court and is known for her 2019 decision denying the Trump claim of immunity, writing in her opinion -- quote -- "Presidents are not kings. They do not have subjects bound by loyalty or blood."
Her nomination comes as a -- at a crucial moment, as Trump's tilting of the court to the right is chipping away at our freedoms, which is why you have Republicans like insurrection fan Josh Hawley saying garbage like Jackson has a pattern of letting child porn offenders off the hook, a desperate, cherry-picked lie that fails to mention how Judge Jackson issued sentences that were consistent with or above the government recommendations in the overwhelming majority of her cases.
It just proves how conservatives are really having a hard time finding an effective way to smear her. Even America's largest policing organization endorsed Judge Jackson, which -- so, Republicans are resorting to their MAGA cult playbook, using racism to stoke anti-woke rage.
Putin puppet and failed CIA candidate "Tuckums" Tucker Carlson even demanded he needed to see Judge Jackson's LSAT scores, an order that wreaked of anti-blackness and "Show me your papers" birtherism, while others have deemed her a radical.
It all boils down to the usual racism and misogyny, the radical black lady, the unqualified black lady, the black woman chosen only on the basis of her race and gender. Rinse. Repeat.
Meanwhile, Judge Jackson brings more judicial experience to the bench than many of the other justices, including Chief Justice John Roberts.
The Republicans are going to have a hard time finding ways to discredit her.
Now, Ketanji and I were undergraduates at Harvard at the same time, so I can personally attest that she is brilliant, focused, studious, and kind. And standing in her way would be very stupid politics for Republicans or for their conservative Democratic friends.
We are pretty close to making some pretty remarkable history, but we're also bracing ourselves for racism and sexism to be right in the spotlight next week at these hearings.
We're going to be watching very closely starting Monday. And we know what we're going to expect. But we're ready for it. So don't forget to come back.
And that is tonight's REIDOUT.
"ALL IN WITH CHRIS HAYES" starts now.