Russian troops have launched a broad assault on Ukraine from all sides. The attack began before dawn and brought explosions to the Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and other cities.
Ukraine’s leadership said Thursday at least 40 people have been killed so far in what it called a “full-scale war” targeting the country from the east, north and south.
Shelling and missile strikes have been reported around the country. Analysts say that the airstrikes are aimed at clearing the way for ground forces to move in.
Russian troops were seen breaking through the Kyiv region, NBC News reports, advancing from the north past the state border between the capital city and Belarus, Ukraine's Ministry of the Interior said.
In a post to its Telegram channel, the ministry said Russian military personnel and tanks had entered through the Vilcha checkpoint, less than 100 miles north of the capital on a road which runs directly to the city.
"Border guards together with the Ukrainian military accepted the battle," it said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Thursday the Russian forces were also trying to seize the Chernobyl nuclear power plant near the border of Belarus, a Russian ally.
Large parts of the Chernobyl Zone have been closed to the public for decades after a nuclear power reactor melted down there during the Soviet Union's reign in 1986, causing the release of large amounts of radiation into the air.
Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to Ukraine's interior minister, said on Facebook that the National Guard of Ukraine, which guards the storage of unsafe radioactive waste, was fiercely resisting.
"If the occupiers' artillery strikes hit the nuclear waste storage facility, radioactive dust may cover the territories of Ukraine, Belarus and the EU countries," Gerashchenko wrote.
Russian ground forces were also reported advancing from the east through Donetsk and Luhansk, the two separatist-held areas recognized by Russian President Vladimir Putin as independent this week in a prelude to the attack, and from Crimea in the south.
The ground invasion comes after an overnight attack from the air.
The Russian military claimed to have wiped out Ukraine’s entire air defenses in a matter of hours, and European authorities declared the country's air space an active conflict zone. Russia's claims could not immediately be verified, nor could Ukrainian ones that they had shot down several Russian aircraft.
Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to Ukraine’s interior minister, said on Facebook that the Russian military had launched missile strikes on Ukrainian military command facilities, air bases and military depots in Kyiv, Kharkiv and Dnipro.
This is a live update. Click here for complete coverage of the crisis in Ukraine.
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