that happen in the rest of the world all the time. there isn t the sense you get in the rest of the world is the world is on fire. the one place you don t get it is in russia. it s interesting. in your piece you talk about someone being arrested on the street and people not noticing it. this sort of everything is sort of blandized where nobody sees what is happening around them. you know, i was just talking about with my team earlier today it is as if fox news was the only thing you could watch on tv, there was nothing else, well, a lot of people here wouldn t know what is going on in ukraine. they would see a certain view that is what fox news told them is happening if there is no other option, that s the way i think of it. is that what we should think people are being fed a very selective view of the world so for the most part, lots of people believe it? i think yes, for the most part, lots of people believe it but imagine you re watching fox news and you re going out and
seeing empty store shelves. things that were there yesterday are no longer there. like today social media that are still coming out of russia are showing shelves that are entirely empty where sanitariry products used to be, right? which is such an essential element of human dignity that came with life after the soviet union and that just is disappearing again and right now, you re showing the stores that have shuttered from ikea to mcdonald s to h&m and zara, luxs that made up the landscape of everyday life. that s disappearing but you watch russian tv, you hear the special military operation and the government is taking measures to stabilize the economic situation is another small period of hardship and
areas and the economy enters a tail spin. the nice thing that s nice about a war is not a war but it s easy to look away. joining me is masha. i know you recently came back from russia and i am dying to know what you saw, the folks you talked to, what they know about what is happening in ukraine. i think maybe it s more important to think about what they don t know. they don t know that it is a massive war operation and, you know, what is really striking is that even people who are and this is a vanishing small number but even the vanishingly small number of people still consuming independent media blocked by russian authorities takes a huge effort to use the virtual private network to see independent media, even they don t quite get the picture that television viewers in the west
those concerns. according to the german magazine build sergei lavrov was on a flight headed to beijing but the plane turned around and flew back towards moscow. nbc news has not been able to confirm that reporting. china called for dialogue. joining me is host of the world tonight. always great to see you. let s talk first about the incentives that china has. china says russia is its good friend. let s put up the graphic how much business they actually do with russia versus how much they do with us. the e.u. is actually the person, the entity in the world that they do the most business with, $828 billion versus $755.6 billion with the united states. we know there are so many products made in china in the united states. they only do about $146 billion with russia. what on earth would be their incentive to side with this country that s essentially
fallujah back. they had an election coming up. putin doesn t want to take kyiv like that. he needs to get to the middle and raise the russian flag and call a win. that s not what is going to happen. you hit the nail on the head. what do they not have the will to fight? the ukrainians had the will to keep their country. once you ve seen what the russians do, you lost the war. he s already lost. the question then is how many people are going to end up in body bags before it s all over. everyone, every expert we had on from major spencer on have made it very clear russia is not winning tactically this war. it is a disaster for them. but they are killing a lot of people. and it seems to me at this point killing a lot of people is the point. is that what you re feeling and seeing on the ground? well, first of all, i really hope kyiv doesn t turn into fa lee fallujah.