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Melissa Harris-Perry: This is The Takeaway. I'm Melissa Harris-Perry. Thanks for starting your week with us. Earlier this month, Russian forces bombed a theater in Mariupol. It was being used to shelter more than 1,000 civilians, and the word children have been written outside the theater in large Russian letters that were clearly visible from the sky. The theater bombing is just one attack in a relentless campaign against the strategic southern city.

Initially, Ukrainian officials reported that more than 100 people were rescued after surviving the attack, but at the end of last week, they reported that at least 300 others have been found dead from the bombing. Although those deaths have not been independently verified, according to the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, over 1,000 civilians have been killed in Ukraine since the start of the bloody Russian invasion.

A report out last week by the Associated Press found that Russian forces have attacked 34 different medical facilities in Ukraine since the start of the invasion. Actions that would constitute war crimes if investigators determine they were carried out deliberately. At the same time in a sign of Ukraine's sustained resistance to Russian forces, a senior US official speaking off the record on Friday told reporters that Russia is no longer attempting to take control of the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv and will be shifting its focus to the Eastern Donbas region. For more in all this, I'm joined now by Valerie Hopkins, a correspondent for the New York Times currently reporting from Ukraine. Valerie, thanks so much for joining us.

Valerie Hopkins: Thank you very much for having me.

Melissa Harris-Perry: What's the latest information we have right now about Russia's attacks on civilians who were sheltering in the theater in Mariupol?

Valerie Hopkins: Gosh, well, the information is more and more difficult to come by from Mariupol, but the mayor this morning gave an interview to a Ukrainian outlet, and he basically said that we know that at least 300 people have died according to eyewitnesses. He also has been talking about the fact that between 20 and 30,000 people have been forcibly taken by Russians from parts of the city that Russian forces are controlling and taken either across the border to Russia or first to Russian hill territory within Ukraine.

This is incredibly concerning to them. Right now, over the last few days as I've been trying to find out what's happening in the theater, as we've been trying to confirm how many people survived and how many people died because we know about 130 people survived. There were estimated hundreds in there, but all the city authorities that I've talked to have said, "We can't get accurate information because there are street battles going on in that territory," and this is the heart of Mariupol, so it's very concerning.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Now, people were taken for what reason? Do we have any sense around that?

Valerie Hopkins: Well, no. Russia has tried to cast this war from the very beginning as a war of liberation, as a war of freeing people, freeing Ukraine, and freeing, especially predominantly Russian-speaking parts of Ukraine like Mariupol from the onerous yoke of what Putin has called Nazi government. At the same time, in the past three weeks, I've spoken to, I don't know, tens of people who've been coming out of Mariupol. Nobody has wanted to be liberated. Nobody wants to go to Russia.

I can only read the Russian statements and surmise, but I believe that this is part of the Kremlin's attempt to show that there are people who prefer Russia who want to go there and to try to bolster their argument of this as a war of liberation, which is totally false.

Melissa Harris-Perry: We spoke a few weeks ago with a young woman whose grandmother was in Mariupol. She hadn't been spoken to her in quite some time. We had followed up and learned that the grandmother had managed to make it out of Mariupol but our whole team, I think, had been just absolutely sickened by the story, the distress, the sense of being completely cut off from an elder in your own family. We also assumed it's probably one story of many, many like that. Can you help us to understand for residents who are still stuck in the city, what conditions are for them, and whether or not they have any capacity to communicate with friends and family beyond the city?

Valerie Hopkins: Gosh. This is, I think, one of the hardest and most devastating parts, especially for people who've left, leaving behind relatives and family members is heart-wrenching for them, much more difficult than going without food and water. That's some of the stories that I've heard. I spoke to somebody last week who managed to make it out with her husband and two children, but left behind her father and his octogenarian parents because they only had enough gas for one car.

They had one more space in the car for this woman's father, but he could not leave the parents behind. What I'm hearing is that there are an estimated 160,000 people still in Mariupol, and many of them are elderly and infirm and people who were not able to, as other people I've spoken to simply walk out of the city or people who didn't have access to cars, people who were too weak to move after weeks of being deprived of food and water.

I met someone yesterday in Lviv where I am now at a shelter for displaced Ukrainians, and she's a baker with three children, and she said that she wasn't in the siege for three weeks. The first week and a half, she said there was still enough food, and by the second week, she was feeding her three young daughters all under the age of 14 one bowl of porridge that they shared every day, and she wasn't eating.

She said, the other thing they had was a jar of honey, and they each took one spoonful of honey per day. She said that was their lunch, and the other thing was their meals. These people who are left, who are mostly old and infirm, I believe, that in addition to having lost gas, heating, water, electricity, as they did already three weeks ago or more, now they're really running out of food. This woman I mentioned earlier said that every three to four days, she was getting text messages from her dad. One of them just said, "We have no roof, no water and no food." Then it was days before she heard from them again.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Is there any capacity for international humanitarian organizations to provide relief?

Valerie Hopkins: The International Red Cross actually said today that they would be unable to provide assistance in Mariupol because the Russian government and the Ukrainian government could not guarantee their security. There is some frustration with the Red Cross because of ongoing meetings with Russian leaders. There was, I think, you maybe covered this unfortunate photo-op meeting in Moscow a few days ago between the head of the red cross and of Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

I think the Russians are quite keen to have the Red Cross assisting them in their providing humanitarian support to people who've evacuated from Mariupol, but the Ukrainians do not want to see this because they believe it's legitimizing these deportations. I would say that while there may be some people who are very happy to just be in a safe place, others, including this woman that I met yesterday, who had been taken first to Russian held territory and then managed to escape with her three children-- they don't want to be there.

This woman's husband is actually fighting against Russian soldiers, and she was terrified of being discovered and penalized for this. I've also spoken to other people who managed to flee to Ukrainian government-held territory, who had received sporadic messages from their friends who said, "We're here, but we don't want to be here." In fact, today there was a humanitarian convoy that was going to go from another city in Ukraine to Mariupol and to some of the other areas which need support.

The deputy prime minister said, "We have been informed of potential acts of sabotage along this line, so today we can't provide humanitarian assistance." The situation is dire and only growing more dire.

Melissa Harris-Perry: You mentioned that you're in the city of Lviv and that has been a relatively safe location in Ukraine relatively to make that key farthest to the West, but we do know that Russian forces did send missiles very near the city a little over a week ago. I'm wondering for those of you who are in Lviv so much to the extent that there is press and particularly foreign press available coming out of Lviv, wondering for those of you in Western Ukraine, what the messaging is right now, what you're concerned about and what the circumstances are like?

Valerie Hopkins: In fact, actually on Saturday for the first time, the Russian missiles hit two targets in Lviv. A fuel storage depot and a tank factory and both of which are actually in the city. Previously, we regularly would hear air raid sirens, and people continue going about their business. After Saturday evening, when these two [unintelligible 00:09:39] three missiles struck people are incredibly nervous. Yesterday, I went to both of these sites and I also met people.

I met a woman who had come here from Bucha, which is a key of suburb that has been the scene of some of the most horrific fighting between Ukrainian army soldiers and Russian troops. She was in consulate. She was crying and she just said, "I came here. I thought I was going to be safe here. I'm worried this is going to be another Bucha." She's still trying to work through so much trauma that she experienced under the Russian occupation.

I went also to the train station yesterday evening, and I met a family from Kharkiv which has also been heavily hit by the Russian. Second city in Ukraine, very close to the Russian border, 25 miles. They said, "We came here a month ago. We've been sleeping in hostels, in churches. We finally leased an apartment, we were finally starting to feel settled, and we were finally starting to feel safe. These missile strikes shattered all of that."

Unfortunately, it also shattered their family because the mother was leaving with her two children and mother-in-law, and her husband has to stay in Ukraine because of martial law. It was the most difficult part of that discussion. Of course, many people who've come to Lviv, they really want to stay here because they really hope that the war is going to be over soon. They really want to go home. They're not ready to take a next uncertain step. This family had no idea where they were going.

What struck me most was that the father in the [unintelligible 00:11:16] said, "The other reason that we decided to do this is that if, God forbid, something happens to one of us, the other parent will still be alive because we won't be separated." These are the types of decisions that families have to make now. There are other people as well that I've met who fled once from the beginning of the war from places in Russian troop held Donetsk and Luhansk territories to Kyiv, then they fled from Kyiv to Lviv. Now, some of them are again fleeing.

Melissa Harris-Perry: President Biden did say last week that NATO will respond in kind if Russia uses chemical weapons in Ukraine. I'm wondering how that signal has been received by the people of Ukraine on the ground there.

Valerie Hopkins: If I'm honest, President Biden's visit was heavily watched here, but this is not actually something that most Ukrainians that I've talked to are discussing or talking about. Most of them are super focused on just trying to feel safe, trying to avoid missiles. They're very concerned about an escalation of the war here in the east, and they are certainly very fearful of a chemical weapons attack simply because I think very few people expected the dramatic escalation on February 24th. I think for most people now that's shattered any illusions or any red lines that they thought Vladimir Putin might have.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Valerie Hopkins is a correspondent for the New York Times currently reporting from Ukraine. Thank you, Valerie, stay as safe as you can.

Valerie Hopkins: Thank you very much.

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