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Ukrainian officials said more than 40 soldiers and as many as 10 civilians had been killed since the Russian invasion of Ukraine began shortly before dawn. Oleksiy Arestovych, an adviser in the President’s Office, said a few dozen soldiers had also been injured and “as far as I know, at the moment there are a few civilian deaths — up to 10.”
Russia’s invasion follows weeks of warnings from the United States and other Western powers that an attack against Ukraine was imminent — and weeks of denials by Moscow that it planned any such action.
As air raid sirens rang out across the capital, Kyiv, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky moved to enact martial law and government ministers accused Moscow of launching a “full scale invasion” that would be resisted.
In a video message on his official Facebook page, Zelensky said Ukrainian forces had “already taken on the first blow of the enemy and are resisting.”
“Putin began war against Ukraine, against the entire democratic world. He wants to destroy my country, our country, everything we’ve been building, everything we are living for,” he said.
Heavy traffic could be seen clogging roads heading west out of the city as dawn broke, while further east, near the Russian border, the mayor of Kharkiv urged citizens not to leave their homes.
Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba tweeted on his official page that “peaceful Ukrainian cities are under strike” and called the situation “a war of aggression.” And an adviser to the Ukrainian Interior Minister, Anton Gerashchenko, told journalists Russia’s “invasion has begun” with “missile strikes on Kyiv.”
CNN teams on the ground heard explosions in and near multiple Ukrainian cities, including Kyiv, the second largest city Kharkiv, Odessa, and distant firing from Zaporizhzhiya. Images released by Zelensky’s office showed large explosions to the east of the capital Kyiv with huge columns of smoke rising into the air.
CNN witnessed, through a livestream video, troops atop a column…
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Source : cnn
