positive evacuate into cities. and ukrainian president volodymyr zelenskyy said expected to reach mariupol later today. according to the u.n. nearly 2.7 million refugees fled ukraine since the invasion began with more than half flooding into poland. we begin our coverage with nbc news foreign correspondent molly hunter, who s in lviv in western ukraine. molly, you re miles away from the military base the russians blew up in an air strike this morning. is there a sense of looming danger as russians advance west? reporter: jonathan the fear the last two and a half weeks. right? the war would march more westward. this is the safe haven for people coming from the east and the itty is packed full. when we spoke last week, jonathan, a lot of people. 200,000 additional people and residents in the city. a week later the numbers is hundreds and hundreds of
bomb every single block of the town and destroy it or level it, chemical weapons allow essentially the death of all civilians inside that location, very horrible death but the structure and the city remains intact and can be retaken over time. that s what i m worried about, the closer the russian border to stiffer resistance in the city, what would russians have to do without a grinding chemical warfare. my god. i hope we don t see that. clint watts, thank you very much for bringing your expertise to the sunday show. next, germany and france are deeply engaged in trying to find a diplomatic end to russia s war on ukraine, but will they succeed? german ambassador to the united states emily haber joins me live. is turning into their pa. -not those two. -yep, they re gone. -forever? -yep. that there is progressive s homequote explorer website, where i compared home insurance rates.
humanitarian corridors. the u.n. says nearly 2.7 million people have fled ukraine since february 24th. let s begin this hour with nbc news foreign correspondent matt bradley who is live on the ground in ukraine. matt, thank you for being here. paint a picture of what s happening on the ground for us. what s happened behind you? reporter: yeah, jonathan, what we re seeing here, this is the city, we re a little west of the capital of kyiv. right here, about a week ago, there were a couple of projectiles that fell right here, as many as at least three civilians were killed. jonathan, we ve been in this city the past two days. one of the things we keep asking people, why is this place being targeted? why are so many civilian targets taking the brunt of this war? as you can see here, really is devastating. these are all residential buildings. they re homes. one of the words we keep hearing from people here is that this is
throughout the middle east. particularly syria and countries that russia has a strong alliance with. it will become a man power issue over time, just so they can continue to grind towards kyiv. talk about man power, advancing from kyiv in the north and mariupol in the south. will the russians be successful, considering as you just talked about, it s been a brind. there s been big resistance among ukrainians on the russians over the last 18 days. so if you see the cities there you have kharkiv down to mariupol and to dnipro, sits right on the dnipro river thashs city, that is essentially the eastern half of ukraine. looks like two axes of advance to see from north to south trying to link up and
as days go on and attacks continue to creep closer to the city, that may change. molly hunter coming to us live from lviv, ukraine. thank you very much for that. let s turn now to nbc news correspondent elly. reporter: nerves are rattled here in poland. the air strike just 12 miles from the border and in this region the busiest border crossing in poland. madika border crossing. the past 18 days since the conflict started. a main corridor for people fleeing ukraine. leaving from lviv and arrive in madika, around about here. we re not far from the crossing