Russia widens its attack on Ukraine: ‘We now have war in Europe’
KHARKIV, Ukraine — Russia pressed ahead with its assault on neighboring Ukraine on Thursday, with explosions resounding in cities across the country, airstrikes crippling its defenses and reports of troops crossing the border by land and sea.
Huge traffic snarls formed in Kyiv as residents tried to flee the Ukrainian capital. Video showed Russian armored vehicles advancing into mainland Ukraine from Crimea, the peninsula that Moscow illegally seized eight years ago. Ukrainian air-traffic controllers sealed off the country’s airspace “due to the high risk of aviation safety for civil aviation.”
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy declared martial law in his embattled nation and encouraged his compatriots to take up arms. Meanwhile, the U.S. and the West prepared to impose punishing sanctions on Russia for an invasion that they had warned for weeks was coming but that Moscow had denied was planned.
Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to Ukraine’s interior minister, said on Facebook that Russian missiles had struck Ukrainian military command centers, air bases and depots in Kyiv and the major cities of Kharkiv and Dnipro.
Russian President Vladimir Putin portrayed the incursion
