careful message, which, of course, both outraged followers of chelsea and at the same time certainly outraged some leaders in moscow. so a very delicate balance, these oligarchs are going to be taking over the next several weeks. nbc s keir simmons in moscow. thank you so much. greatly appreciate it. let s talk more about the massive impact on the russian economy, bring in cnbc s dominic chu. dom, you have a complete collapse of the ruble. you have the russian stock market shut down now, panicking because they know today is going to get much, much worse. you have interest rates spiking to 20%. western banks calling russians, telling them to close down their accounts. we all predicted this. we all knew this was going to happen. it is why many couldn t imagine that putin would be dumb enough to actually go into ukraine. he has done it. how bad is it for the russian
courtney kube. keir simmons in moscow, and andrea mitchell and hager shamali, a former spokes spokesperson for the treasury department. we just heard from the president. we re about to hear from the secretary of state. and mike, the president, he was done with vladimir putin, it seems like. he left that door of diplomacy open a crack, but he was tough. listen, hallie, this is what we ve been talking about for three months, how the white house was cal lating what they describe as swift and skweer sanctions should russia invade ukraine. there are questions in the last day why it took the white house to officially call it an invasion. you had the president very
ukraine and to the actions of the west. i think also there was a message in there for what russia calls its partners. countries in places like central asia, like kazakhstan, saying in my opinion everyone should think about normalizing these relations and cooperating and developing relations. trying to send a message to russia s partners, countries seen as closure to russia, a message i think, directed at opposing sanctions and trying to insure he protects the russian economy from the very tough sanctions. keir simmons in moscow for us. be safe, be careful. and joining me former u.s. ambassador to russia. your reaction to russia s strike on the nuclear power plant. obviously disaster averted. but ukraine s foreign minister said this could have been 10 times worse than chernobyl. i agree with the caller you had on earlier today.
conversations might be happening. i suspect the russians would want those conversations to happen because that would put pressure on the west about those supply lines, about supporting the ukrainians. that s the kind of detail when you get into conflict, when you get into war that can matter a great deal. keir simmons in moscow, thank you very much, keir. nbc s cal perry in ukraine, thank you as well. joe and mika, there s the military miscalculation by putin, there s the disinformation loss he is suffering, an alleged genius of disinformation getting lapped as you said by the ukrainians. and we haven t touched yet on the economic collapse he is suffering inside his country he brought upon himself because of the russian sanctions. the ruble is collapsing, inflation rates are through the roof, the stock market is falling and the russian people are saying, for what? you are destroying our economy for what, president putin? and it is, it is devastating. you are seeing oligarchs now
sanctions against more russian oligarchs. with me now is erin mclaughlin in lviv, western ukraine. keir simmons in moscow. erin, good morning. tell us more about what you are seeing in lviv today? hoy, jose. the western city of lviv is a way point for thousands of people fleeing the violence all over ukraine. earlier this morning, we were at the central train station and it was staggering to see the number of people pouring out of the station, many with destination unknown, many of them were from the city of kharkiv. kharkiv is the second largest city in ukraine. it is located in the northeastern portion of the country and has been the subject of intense bombardment with dozens of missiles raining down on residential areas, striking government buildings. the reports that russian paratroopers landed there this