Moscow: Russia launched attacks on multiple cities in Ukraine .The first blasts rang out just minutes after Russian President Vladimir Putin gave a televised speech saying that he was authorizing military action — warning other countries that if they tried to intervene they would face a Russian response “so severe that no foreign nations have ever experienced it before.”
Ukrainian officials reported that cruise or ballistic missiles targeted military control centers in the Kyiv area. Air raid sirens rang out across the capital of Kyiv and explosions were seen and heard there and in other cities across the country, a media outlet reporters on the ground said.
In the first announcement of casualties, Ukraine’s General Office of the National Police said that at least six people were killed and seven others wounded in a bombing in the southern Odessa region. The media outlet was not immediately able to confirm the report.
Russia attacked Ukraine #RussiaUkraineCrisis #russiaukrainewar #WWIII pic.twitter.com/w44WHnoEEs
— Chandraprakash Prajapati (@official_cpbro) February 24, 2022
Ukraine said that the Russian military was attacking with the help of Belarus, where Russian troops have been deployed for months. Surveillance video broadcast online by the Ukraine’s Border Guard Service showed tanks and armored vehicles crossing into Ukraine from Belarus. But Belaurs has denied the Ukraine claim.
The Ukrainian State Emergency Service said that two villages in the country’s east had been captured by Russian forces. Meanwhile, the government reported “mass cyberattacks” on its websites.
Ukraine said its troops had returned fire, and it was clarifying information on injuries, its interior ministry said.
Reporting from the capital, the media outlet reporter said that as dawn broke “people here are terrified. They have been staying up all night monitoring the situation and there has been an element of disbelief up until this point that the Russians would go after the capital.”
#URGENT🇷🇺🇺🇦 | The Kharkov gap being attacked by the Russian military from the air#Russia #Rusia #Ukraine #Ucrania #Putin pic.twitter.com/VINF99QYuF
— Jennix (@JennixFN) February 24, 2022
Highways out of the city were gridlocked with cars as families attempted to flee, according to live television pictures the media outlet journalists in the city. They reported that there were long lines at ATMs, grocery stores and gas stations.
In the northeastern city of Kharkiv, less than 20 miles from the Russian border. The mood had shifted dramatically as the sun rose from the relative calm of just a day before. As explosions rang out in the distance, some people were panic-buying from stores and trying to gain entry into other shops that weren’t open yet, he said.
Ukrainian officials said the full invasion had begun. Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said in a tweet that “the world can and must stop Putin.”
At the United Nations, Ukrainian ambassador Sergiy Kyslytsya spoke directly to his Russian counterpart, saying, “There is no purgatory for war criminals. They go straight to hell.”
The attacks drew swift rebuke from President Joe Biden, who vowed to take action.
“Russia alone is responsible for the death and destruction this attack will bring, and the United States and its allies and partners will respond in a united and decisive way,” he said in a statement. “The world will hold Russia accountable.”
Russia has surrounded Ukraine on three sides with some 150,000 troops, in addition to air and naval forces. The buildup, allied with Moscow’s bold security demands, prompted fears of an invasion and stark predictions for civilian and military casualties.
The move leaves Europe facing one of its gravest security crises since the Cold War, and Biden confronting perhaps his greatest foreign policy challenge since taking office. He previously said a Russian invasion would be “the most consequential thing that has happened in the world, in terms of war and peace, since World War II.”
MIA: #Russia attacked residential buildings in #Kharkiv suburb with #Smerch multiple rocket launchers. No official info on casualties#StandWithUkraine #Ukraine #UkraineWillResist pic.twitter.com/4Gyaz1H8Xc
— UATV English (@UATV_en) February 24, 2022
Putin has also repeatedly said he does not believe Ukraine has the historical right to exist as an independent country.
The fresh crisis comes eight years after Moscow annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula and backed pro-Russian separatists in the country’s east, a conflict that has remained unresolved and claimed an estimated 14,000 lives.
In recent days an escalation in shelling there, followed by Russia recognizing the breakaway regions’ independence and sending in troops, stoked fears that Putin was creating a pretext for an attack
