‘Full-Scale War’ Begins as Russia Attacks Cities Around Ukraine

No one really believed Russian President Vladimir Putin when he announced earlier this week that the open advancement of Russian troops into eastern Ukraine was a “peacekeeping” mission. Still, some thought—or at least hoped—that Russia would initially stick to invading contested areas in the Donbas region, where Russia-backed separatists have been fighting Ukrainian forces since 2014.

Those hopes have been dashed, as Russian aggression has already started extending beyond the areas that Putin earlier this week declared the Donetsk People’s Republic and Luhansk People’s Republic and begun mounting a full-fledged invasion of Ukraine.

Ukraine’s Interior Ministry said—last night U.S. Eastern Time, early morning Ukrainian time—that Russian missiles had struck military targets in Ukraine’s capital city of Kyiv and in the country’s second-largest and fourth-largest cities, Kharkiv and Dnipro.

NPR journalists in Ukraine reported hearing explosions in Kyiv, Kharkiv, and Odessa, while the Associated Press “saw or confirmed explosions in the capital, in Mariupol on the Azov Sea, and Kharkiv in the east” and “confirmed video showing Russian military vehicles crossing into Ukrainian-held territory in the north from Belarus and from Russian-annexed Crimea in the south.”

“This morning Russia launched a new military operation against our state,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a statement:

There are strikes on military and other important defense facilities, border units are under attack, the situation in the Donbas has degraded.

The Armed Forces of Ukraine, all special and law enforcement agencies of the state are on alert. The National Security and Defense Council is working in an emergency mode.

Martial law will be imposed.

Earlier this morning our time, Zelenskyy tweeted that Russia was “embark[ing] on a path of evil.”

“A full-scale war in Europe has begun,” said Zelenskyy adviser Mykhailo Podolyak. “Russia is not only attacking Ukraine, but the rules of normal life in the modern world.”

Morning to all those on the American east coast waking up to news about war in Ukraine.

A very eerie, calm scene in central Kyiv today as many have left the city heading west pic.twitter.com/vuyLuNeApz

— Tim Mak (@timkmak) February 24, 2022

President Joe Biden said in a statement last night that he will “meet with my G7 counterparts in the morning and then speak to the American people to announce the further consequences the United States and our Allies and partners will impose on Russia for th