the ukrainian force president has remained in constant contact with his struggling country, regularly posting to social media videos online, to send messages not only to ukrainians, but to people around the world, to dispel russian rumors that he has left the country. in a video address in the weeks before friday morning, the president, president zelenskyy, claimed that russia wants to, quote, destroy ukraine politically by destroying the head of the state. this comes as biden reiterated his red line promising not to send u.s. troops to ukraine. now that left zelenskyy with his stark message to his nation. we are in it alone. quote, we are left to our own devices, in defense of our state. who is ready to fight together with us? honestly? i do not see such. that is why this hour with nbc s raf sanchez in moscow. rough, lots to get to. including the developments from
this developing in moscow. where does that stand? yeah, hallie, we re seeing a crackdown on the streets and a crackdown online. on the streets, russian anti-war protesters are back out tonight in st. petersburg, despite that enormous wave of arrests last night. 1700 people arrested across 50 cities. one placard up in st. petersburg said peace for ukraine, freedom for us. now online, the russian prosecutor general has announced just in the last couple of hours they are planning to impose some form of censorship on facebook in this country. we just took a look at the nbc news in moscow. facebook is still online but we re still expecting various critical of the government media sites may find they are being censored. a lot of russians aren t on facebook, they are on an equivalent. this is coming as vladimir putin
reporting as always. i know you ll come back with updates. appreciate it. to our other big breaking news. the russian military getting further into ukraine. we re getting word of a call between president biden and ukrainian president zelenskyy this afternoon. it comes as we re seeing russia s military looking like it s hitting more resistance than expected. according to what we re hearing from a u.s. defense official. russia estimated to have already conducted more than 200 total missile launches. and you know that means you have ukrainian women, kids, older adults all scrambling for safety. with men aimi aged 18 to 60 blo from leaving the country. all of it as what we referenced at the top of the show, that u.n. security council meeting is happening now. we ll see a push to try to hold a vote in support of ukraine. the writing is a little bit on the wall on how that goes. we ll talk about it in a second. let me bring in cal perry who is in western ukraine. raf sanchez in moscow, jos
putin s war. and pc news is rough sanchez in moscow. thank you for starting us off. let s continue with william taylor, he s a former ambassador to ukraine and vice president for a russia europe at the institute of peace. and nina crushable, she s a professor of international affairs of the new school in great granddaughter to former soviet premier, nikita khrushchev. i can t think of a better too to have this conversation. with ambassador taylor, i want to start with you, what s significant development today, both on the economic and military front. germany announced that it would join the list of countries sending military assistance to ukraine. it is a historical shift for this country that has tried to remain at least militarily on the sidelines when it comes to confrontations like this. it has had a long-standing policy of never sending weapons to conflict zones, but that has changed it seems. this has been critical of the west response to russia s aggression. it is ukraine, from