Foreign correspondent matt bradley. matt, what s the latest? reporter: yeah, mika, so we re here in zaporizhzhia. this is a receiving center. as you can see, this is a big box store with a huge parking lot. a lot of people arriving from all over the region, not just from mariupol. we re still waiting on the huge number of people coming out of the azovstal steel plant. some people are arriving from the surrounding region, areas still very much under shelling. i want to introduce you to lisa, our excellent local producer here. this is yulia. she s just arrived. can you tell us, what have you seen? what was it like traveling here? [ speaking foreign language ] translator: at the moment when they passed the checkpoint where there was russians, she was crying.
Does it look more inviting to vladimir putin now? of course, right now, certainly, with the problems he s having, it does not. i m just curious, though, how do you see this ending? so we re all struggling to understand that question, how does this end? right now, we say it probably ends in a grinding stalemate. a bitter slugfest with heavy casualties on both sides. general milley or chairman of the joint chiefs talked about this. months or even years of battling. when i look at footage like what we just saw of the ref yu we just saw of the refgees leaving mariupol and the region, i m reminded of the x-factor in this war. the x-factor is the resolve of the ukrainian people. russians didn t count on it. the united states didn t count on it. we thought this would go quickly. kyiv would fall in a week.
Come after it and force a sale. the same thing goes on in turkey. the state has seized over $32 billion of assets. it is happening in viktor orban s hungary. no one talks about that because it is supposed to be good for business. but it s not, as we re seeing. we re going to talk about the evacuation going on in mariupol in just a moment. while we re on the topic of china, let s bring in from beijing nbc news foreign correspondent janis mackey frayer. talk to us, if you could, tell us a little bit about how china s leader is scrambling on covid as it pertains to life inside his country and also the world economy. reporter: well, right now, it s not been declared a lockdown here in beijing, but it sure does feel like one. there are so many restrictions that are in place now. restrictions that have been in place since before the olympics that are just being tightened. right now, we can barely travel
Meanwhile, let s go to mariupol, the long-awaited evacuation of that besieged steel plant in mariupol is under way. according to president zelenskyy, more than 100 civilians, mostly women and children, were evacuated yesterday and were being taken to ukrainian-controlled territory. this video of the evacuation has not been verified by nbc news. zelenskyy said many more are expected to be moved to safety today. as you can see, it is precarious for these people. the evacuations, which are being carried out by the international red cross and the u.n., along with ukrainian and russian officials, comes after weeks of attempts and negotiations. in a new video, the deputy commander of ukraine s far right group welcomed the evacuations but said that he hoped the soldiers who are still inside would also be safely removed from the sprawling plant.
Haunting, apocalyptic scenes in mariupol. explosions russia has bombarded this city into near submission. once home to about 500,000 people, thousands are believed to have been killed. emergency workers from russia are filmed here, retrieving the dead. moscow has repeatedly denied that its troops are responsible for the mass killings of civilians in ukraine, but mariupol s mayor says some of the worst war crimes have been committed there. translation: they | killed 20,000 people. they did it on purpose. this is what i think. they intentionally prevented people from leaving mariupol. they set this genocide up by closing the city down and using land artillery and air strikes first, and then the warships