INTERNATIONAL: More than 100 people have died less than one day into Putin’s assault. Ukraine’s president has announced on Thursday night that 137 people had been killed, and 316 wounded so far, after Russia has launched a full scale invasion on Ukraine by land, sea and air.
The current death toll includes both Ukrainian soldiers and civilians, according to Ukranian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
As night fell for the first time since Vladimir Putin has initiated the all-out assault, heavy exchanges of fire were taking place the regions of Sumy and Kharkiv in the northeast, and Kherson and Odessa in the south, while Kiev has said heavy Russian shelling was still underway in the eastern Donetsk region.
Moscow’s defence ministry has said ground forces had moved in from annexed Crimea, and had claimed to have “neutralised” Ukraine’s air defences and have destroyed 11 airfields, with Russian troops also seizing an airbase just 25 miles from the capital’s centre. Ukraine’s airforce is thought to have comprised of roughly 200 aircraft.
Russian forces have also reportedly attempted to take control of Ukraine’s Serpent Island, which lies in the Black Sea less than 30 miles from Nato member Romania, while seizing control of the infamous Chernobyl nuclear power plant, a move the Ukrainian president has claimed was “a declaration of war against the whole of Europe”.
President Zelensky has suggested the “missile blasts, fighting and the rumble of aircraft” in his country were “the sound of a new iron curtain, which has come down and is closing Russia off from the civilised world”.
“Our national task is to make sure this curtain does not fall across our land,” the president has said.
Zelensky has moved on Thursday to declare martial law, meaning the military will temporarily take control of Ukraine, and severed all diplomatic ties with Russia. Hours prior to Vladimir Putin’s invasion, Kiev’s parliament has approved a law allowing citizens to bear firearms, while Ukraine’s head has called up reservists to the country’s army.
Ukrainian health minister Viktor Lyashko has also said authorities were repurposing the country’s healthcare facilities to make room for those wounded in the hostilities.
Despite Russia’s claim that “there is no threat to the civilian population”, Moscow’s bombardment was reported to have fatally hit an apartment block near Kharkiv, with some residents in the capital taking to bomb shelters and the city’s subway system.
“Nobody believed that this war would start, and that they would take Kyiv directly” one man waiting out the night in an old Soviet metro station told the Associated Press. “I feel mostly fatigue. None of it feels real.”
