As missiles rain around Ukraine, Russia says Day 1 of invasion successful

Feb. 24: Weeks of intense diplomacy to avert war and the imposition of Western sanctions on Russia failed to deter Putin. Finally, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a military operation in Ukraine on Thursday. Moscow mounted an assault by land, sea and air in the biggest attack on a European state since World War Two, prompting tens of thousands of people to flee their homes.

Russia’s Defence Ministry said its first day of the Ukraine invasion had achieved all its goals and that it had destroyed 83 land-based Ukrainian targets. Ukrainian police said Russia had carried out 203 attacks since the beginning of the day. Russian forces had captured the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, just 90 km north of the capital, and Hostomel airport in the Kyiv region, where paratroopers had earlier been landed. President Volodymyr Zelenskiy called on Ukrainians to defend their country and said arms would be given to anyone prepared to fight.

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 without providing details. Russia denied reports its aircraft or armoured vehicles had been destroyed. As many as 40 Ukrainian soldiers and around 10 civilians have been killed by Russian shelling, a Reuters report quoting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s adviser, said on Thursday.

The Ukrainian city of Mariupol, one of the largest ports on the Azov Sea,  is under heavy fire with reports of explosions, Kyiv Post reported. Taking Mariupol would help Russia secure a direct land route to Crimea, the Ukrainian peninsula annexed by Russia in 2014.

Meanwhile, amid the Russian attack on Ukraine, Prime Minister Narendra Modi appealed for an “immediate cessation of violence” in his phone call to Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday and called for concerted efforts from all sides to return to the path of diplomatic negotiations and dialogue. He expressed his “long-standing conviction that the differences between Russia and the NATO group can only be resolved through honest and sincere dialogue”, the PMO said.