morning. chris jansing picks up the coverage right now. i'm chris jansing live at msnbc headquarters here in new york city. it is tuesday, march 1st. we have so much to cover including an extraordinary speech from the ukrainian president, pleading with european leaders not to let down his country. that speech coming under the dangerous and deadly escalation in the war in ukraine as russia, frustrated by a lack of progress six days after it invasion, is stepping up attacks on civilian areas. this is video from this morning, a shell hitting an apartment building in a southern city where there's been intense fighting for days now. and it appears to be a russian missile hitting a government building in kharkiv's freedom square in the heart of ukraine's second largest city, a city now surrounded. at last count, roughly 660,000 ukrainians have fled their