Kyiv: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky vowed on Friday to live in Kyiv when his troops against Russian invaders advanced to the capital in the largest attack in European countries since World War.
Russia launched an invasion with land, air and sea on Thursday after the war declaration by President Vladimir Putin. It is estimated that 100,000 people fled as explosions and shots rocked big cities. Dozens have been reportedly killed.
Us. And Ukraine said Russia aims to capture Kyiv and bring down the government. Russia on Thursday seized Chernobyl former northern nuclear power plant Kyiv, along the shortest route to the capital of Belarus, where Moscow has contradicted troops.
The enemy has marked me as number one target,” Zelensky warned in video messages. “My family is the number two target. They want to destroy Ukraine politically by destroying the head of state.”
“I will live in the capital. My family is also in Ukraine.”
Putin said Russia was conducting a “special military operation” to protect people, including Russian citizens, experiencing “genocide” in Ukraine – West allegations called propaganda.
Asked whether he was worried about Zelensky’s safety, US Secretary Antony Blinken told CBS: “My knowledge, President Zelensky remains in Ukraine in his post, and of course we are worried about the safety of all our friends in Ukraine – government officials and others.”
SANCTIONS, MILITARY ADVANCES
A democratic country of 44 million people, Ukraine is the largest country in Europe by regions after Russia itself. It chose independence in the autumn of the Soviet Union and recently increased efforts to join the NATO military alliance and the European Union, aspirations that made Moscow.
Putin denied for months that he planned an invasion, even when the United States warned the attack was a rocky satellite image and shared Russian forces facilitating the border of Ukraine.
The United States, Britain, Japan, Canada, Australia and the European Union on Thursday launched more sanctions on Russia above those who took effect earlier this week, aimed at freezing state banks, the government and elite of the global financial system.
Russia is one of the largest energy producers in the world, and both that and Ukraine is one of the main wheat exporters. War and sanctions will disrupt the economy throughout the world who have faced the crisis when they emerge from the Pandemic Coronavirus.
The regulator said there were no casualties, that nothing was destroyed and that the radiation level did not change. It tells the international atomic energy body that he has lost control over the factory, he added.
With heavy battles reported in several fronts, the UN Security Council will vote on Friday with a draft resolution that will punish the Russian invasion and requires Moscow’s direct withdrawal.
However, Moscow can veto its size, and it is not clear how China has refused to move Russia as an invasion, will choose.
The invasion has drawn protests in the United States, Europe and within Russia itself, where authorities hold hundreds of demonstrators who took to the streets on Thursday.
Dmitry Muratov, a Russian newspaper editor who won the Nobel Peace Prize 2021, told the BBC in an interview that February 24, the day of invasion, will go down as the day “Russian future was taken from it”.
“Our peaceful Russians will now feel the world hatred because we start the third world war in the center of Europe.”