Newsman: Ukraine’s capital was rocked by explosions Friday as a Russian advance left residents and leaders bracing for the city to be overrun.
Invading Russian troops bore down on Kyiv despite a desperate defense in which Ukraine said hundreds of its troops were killed and injured.
Russia claimed on Friday afternoon that its forces have blocked Kyiv from the west, which would begin a partial encirclement of the Ukrainian capital.
According to a statement from the Russian Ministry of Defense, Russian forces also have completely blocked the northern Ukrainian city of Chernihiv, about 90 miles north of Kyiv, and now have full control of a key Ukrainian military airport in Hostomel, a town on the edge of the capital. Some 200 Russian helicopters were allegedly used in the attack on the airport.
The Russian Ministry of Defense alleged that Russian forces are “doing everything possible to prevent civilian casualties” and “will not deliver any strikes on residential areas of Kyiv.”
Outside the city,fierce battles had taken place Thursday at Hostomel, home to an international cargo airport, as well as in the areas around the key cities of Kharkiv in the northeast and Kherson in the south.fighting is already taking place in residential areas, Ukrainian authorities said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warns Russian invasion is start of ‘war against all Europe’
Ukrainian Volodymyr Zelenskyy called on Russian President Vladimir Putin to hold negotiations and cease the deadly attacks on his country.
“Fighting is ongoing all over Ukraine. Let’s sit at the table for negotiations to stop people dying,” Zelenskyy said in a televised address Friday afternoon.
Zelenskyy criticized Europe’s response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, calling it too slow and noting divisions. He also issued a dire warning to the rest of Europe.
“It’s not just Russian invasion in Ukraine, it’s the beginning of the war against all Europe, against its unity, all human rights, against all the rules of coexistence on the continent, against European countries’ refusal to change the borders by force,” he said.
President Zelenskyy said that he was “the number one target” of Putin’s invasion — backing up Western intelligence that Russia intends to decapitate his Western-leaning government and possibly replace it with a regime closer to Moscow.
“They want to destroy Ukraine politically by destroying the head of state,” Zelenskyy said in an emotional video address.
On Friday Zelenskyy appealed to global leaders for even more severe sanctions than the ones imposed by the United States and its Western allies in the wake of the Russian invasion. He also called for more defensive help.
“If you don’t help us now, if you fail to offer a powerful assistance to Ukraine, tomorrow the war will knock on your door,” he said.
Zelenskyy also said that Russian troops had been targeting civilians, something denied by Moscow which had for weeks been denying it planned an invasion at all.
“Up until now, we understood Russian troops had set up around the ring road of the city. Now we understand they are moving in,” he said from an underground parking garage filled with press and local residents, including children.
Zelenskyy said in a statement that at least 137 people had been killed and 316 had been injured during the first day of the invasion. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian government said Russia had lost 800 personnel, more than a dozen aircraft and 30 tanks. British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace put the number of Russian casualties at more than 450 in an interview with Sky News on Friday.
“Horrific Russian rocket strikes on Kyiv,” Dmytro Kuleba, Ukraine’s foreign minister, wrote on Twitter. “Last time our capital experienced anything like this was in 1941 when it was attacked by Nazi Germany.”
“The hardest day will be today,” Ukrainian interior ministry adviser Anton Gerashchenko said on the messaging service Telegram early Friday. “The enemy’s plan is to break through with tank columns” to Kyiv, he added.
Despite the United States and its allies leveling rafts of sanctions against Moscow, and warning more will come, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Thursday that this strategy has demonstrably failed to deter the Kremlin. He told his people they were “on our own.”
Russia intends to take the whole of Ukraine but the Russian army failed to deliver on the first day of its invasion, Wallace, the British defense secretary, said.
However, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told an unclassified briefing Thursday with House lawmakers that the current phase of Russia’s military operation was the tip of the spear.
Austin noted that the vast majority of Russian troops were not yet in Ukraine, one person on the call and one senior defense official said.
Russia’s defense ministry said it had achieved all of its main aims on the first day of the military operation.
FEB. 25, 202200:52
It was day two of the attack on Ukraine ordered by Russian President Vladimir Putin, which has brought airstrikes and ground battles to cities across the country while threatening Europe’s gravest security crisis in decades.
In Kyiv, news agency photos from the ground Friday showed members of the Ukrainian National Guard lying prone and aiming their guns along a bridge. Meanwhile underground residents huddled in metro stations, sitting on blankets set up against the walls, some leaning against advertisements.
In Kyiv, an apartment building was hit with debris after an aircraft was shot down, according to Ukrainian officials and the country’s emergency services.
Since before dawn the city of 3 million people faced a barrage of explosions accompaniedby the wail of air-raid sirens, with residents huddled in shelters as Russia pressed forward with the invasion of its democratic neighbor.
The assessment came after Russia attacked key cities across Ukraine Thursday, launching an invasion after months of military buildup and escalating tensions with the West.
Russia’s military launched a long-feared invasion of Ukraine early Thursday, attacking its ex-Soviet neighbor from multiple directions despite warnings of dire consequences from the United States and the international community.
Thursday’s attacks followed weeks of escalating tensions in the region. In a fiery, hourlong speech on Monday, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced he was recognizing the independence of two Russia-backed separatist areas in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region: the self-proclaimed People’s Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk.
Russia has blamed Ukraine for stoking the crisis and reiterated its demands to NATO that Ukraine pledges to never join the transatlantic defense alliance.
UN refugee agency estimates 100,000 Ukrainians are displaced
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees estimates some 100,000 Ukrainians have already been forced from their homes due to the ongoing Russian invasion, spokesperson Shabia Mantoo told ABC News on Friday.
Mantoo cautioned that the agency has not confirmed any exact numbers.
“But there clearly has been significant displacement inside the country and some movements towards and across the borders,” she said.
