moscow with how mr. putin is justifying the escalation in violence. we will get to all of that. welcome, everyone. i m alex witt in for hallie jackson from msnbc world headquarters in new york. we will get to msnbc correspondent erin mclaughlin and also white house correspondent kelly owe dodge. eri kelly o donnell. erin, what is it like where you are and where do you see this current escalation going? around 8:00 this morning, we heard five explosions here in kharkiv, what is the second largest city in ukraine, striking, according to ukrainian officials electrical infrastructure in the kharkiv region, leading to power outages in the city itself, with ukrainian officials say a couple of hours ago, power was restored to the city. this kind of missile strike is actually not all that unusual for kharkiv. it s a weekly occurrence. nothing like what we saw unfold in kyiv, the capital today, in which missiles rained down on the capital, damaging the residential buildings, a chi
documents found by the fbi at trump s private residence and golf club. they dismissed the criminal investigation as a document storage dispute that has sfie ruld out of control. most notable aspect of their filing, trump s lawyers tip-toeing around trump s claim that he declassified any or all of the documents. it s a claim for which they can t and don t provide a single shred of evidence. instead, saying this. quote, the government has not proven these records remain classified. that issue is to be determined later. the washington post notes, a section of their 21 page filing does not say that trump declassified the material before he left office. while trump s lawyers would like us to think this is what they say, document storage dispute, it s worth remembering in the court filing last week doj made clear that the country s national security may very well be in jeopardy if the government loses access and time, even temporarily, to the documents that were seized. from the
Take mariupol here. well, right, so, mariupol is this last city that the russians have been fighting so hard, trying to take for weeks now. they control all the land between donetsk and crimea. clearly it was a major objective to connect crimea, the russian-occupied peninsula of crimea to the parts of eastern ukraine that russian troops controlled and mariupol stood in the way, and it got down to just the azovstal steel plant, which is still untaken, so, it s a thorn in his side, it s preventing him from announcing this, at least partial victory in what has proved to be an incredibly difficult war compared to what he anticipated going in. and i remember asking some of my guests on set here, daniel,
we left early and they were all asleep, she says. goods are dried up. everything is from krim crimea, says. they squeezed ten in here. saying here is good. they re always shooting. tried for a week to get out. we were just on the way to get out and they let us pass as human shields when things were flying over us, she says. it was terrifying. five attempts. he said, they didn t let us through. just turned around. they fled a city where things were not going according to the kremlin s plan. the sham referendum russia planned to consolidate control never happened. and this weekend, almost at the
There are also rumors that he might do other things, like announcing the formal annexannexation of donetsk and luhansk or he might announce a general or partial mobilization. all of those rumors are unverified, we don t know at this point. many options that he could choose between on may 9th. yeah, really trying to read between the lines, trying to look at the putin playbook to try and understand what could come, of course, we have crimea is an example of that, but as you clearly pointed out, daniel, kherson, which we ve seen them trying to have, obviously, a referendum, independence referendum for kherson, we have seen push-back, of course, from ukrainians in kherson. we shall keep an eye on the developments in the coming days. daniel, great to have you on the show, joining us from california.