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Russia’s Defence Ministry said its first day of the Ukraine invasion was “successful” hours after announcing it had destroyed 74 above-ground military infrastructure facilities, including 11 aerodromes.Ukrainian police said Russia had carried out 203 attacks since the beginning of the day.
Missiles rained down on Ukrainian targets. Kyiv reported columns of troops pouring across the borders with Russia and Belarus stretching from the north and east, and landing on the coasts from the Black Sea in the southwest and Azov Sea in the southeast.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke to Russian President Vladimir Putin late Thursday, appealing for an “immediate cessation of violence”. The Indian government ramped up efforts to evacuate Indians stranded in the country.
Fierce fighting was taking place in the regions of Sumy and Kharkiv in the northeast, Kherson and Odessa in the south, and at a military airport near the capital Kyiv, an adviser to the Ukrainian presidential office said.
Ukranian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said troops were trying to fend off Russians attempting to capture the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, just 90 km north of the capital. Regional officials said Ukrainian authorities had lost control of some territory in the Kherson region near Russian-occupied Crimea. Calling on Ukrainians to defend their country, Zelenskiy said arms would be given to anyone prepared to fight.
After President Putin declared war in a pre-dawn televised address, explosions and gunfire were heard throughout the morning in Kyiv, a city of 3 million people. The highway out of the city choked with traffic as residents fled.
Unconfirmed reports of casualties included Ukrainian civilians killed by Russian bombardment and border guards defending the frontier. Authorities in the southern Odessa region said 18 people were killed in a missile attack. At least six people were killed in Brovary, a town near Kyiv, authorities there said. Ukraine reported five people killed when one plane was shot down.
Ukraine’s military said it had destroyed four Russian tanks near Kharkiv, killed 50 troops near a town in Luhansk region, and downed six Russian warplanes in the east. Russia denied reports its aircraft or armoured vehicles had been destroyed. Russian-backed separatists claimed to have downed two Ukrainian planes.
The assault brought a calamitous end to weeks of fruitless diplomatic efforts by Western leaders to avert war, their worst fears about Putin’s ambitions realised.
US President Joe Biden called the Russian action an “unprovoked and unjustified attack”. EU Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen said the bloc would impose a new round of sanctions that would hit Russia’s economy severely. Biden has ruled out sending U.S. troops to defend Ukraine, but Washington has reinforced NATO allies in the region with extra troops and planes.