SLOVYANSK, 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 lumbering 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 Zelensky declared martial law in his embattled nation and encouraged his compatriots to take up arms as 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.
Russian President Vladimir Putin portrayed the incursion — which followed months of Russian military buildup along Ukraine’s borders to the north, east and south — as a move to liberate and protect eastern Ukraine, where Moscow-backed secessionists hold sway over a large swath of the region. He warned other countries not to intervene, saying that it would lead to “consequences you have never seen in history.”
Advertisement
President Biden is expected to confer with other world leaders Thursday to try to coordinate a response to an act of aggression that drew outcry across the globe and that raised the specter of a catastrophic war in Europe.
“Russia alone is responsible for the death and destruction this attack will bring, and the United States and its allies and partners will respond in a united and decisive way,” Biden said.
World & Nation
Full coverage of the crisis in Ukraine
Russia’s move into Ukraine is Europe’s biggest security crisis in decades, raising fears of bloodshed and a return to Cold War-era dynamics.
Washington and its European allies are expected to enact new sanctions — likely designed to freeze out Russia from much of the international financial system — that go beyond those announced earlier this week. But Biden has insisted that U.S. and NATO troops would not fight in Ukraine itself, which is not a member of the Western alliance.
Putin announced his “special military operation” in east Ukraine in a nationally televised address early Thursday in Moscow.
Even as he spoke, bombing runs began across Ukraine, with some two dozen strikes reported on major cities and other areas. Ukrainian police said seven people have been killed, seven wounded and 19 reported missing.
Russia’s defense ministry said in a statement quoted by the Russian Interfax news agency that Ukrainian air defenses were “suppressed.” Ukraine’s defense ministry said its forces shot down five Russian warplanes and a helicopter, an assertion denied by Moscow.
World & Nation
Russian mobilization in Ukraine raises concerns about a new Cold War-style era in Europe
Many people in Europe are on edge as Russia mobilizes against Ukraine. Some fear a return to East-West divisions.
Russian military vehicles were reported to have entered Ukraine from Belarus to the north, where Russian troops had been holding joint military drills that Western capitals warned were a prelude to an incursion. Kyiv lies barely 50 miles south of the Belarusian border.
On Wednesday, Western powers said Russian soldiers had already entered Ukraine from the east, in the industrial heartland known as the Donbas, where Moscow’s proxy militias have engaged in skirmishes with Ukrainian forces for eight years. Putin on Monday had recognized two Donbas enclaves under the control of pro-Russia separatists, Donetsk and Luhansk, as independent republics, setting the stage for him to send in troops to the region under the pretext of “peacekeeping.”
Here in the Donbas town of Slovyansk, the sound of explosions filled the air early Thursday, but residents appeared to remain calm. As the sun rose, some emerged to start the working day, if under tense circumstances.
“We’re going to stay open,” said Bogdan, an 18-year-old barista, as he slipped an almond croissant into a paper bag and handed it to a waiting customer at a local cafe. “For now we’re waiting.”
World & Nation
Russia’s other dangerous weapon against Ukraine? Cyberattacks
A full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine appears imminent, but the two countries have for years been locked in cyber combat.
Anton Chechenko, 30, an electric engineer who works in Slovyansk but whose family lives in Dnipro, about four hours to the west, stood in the central square and watched a flock of pigeons strut on cold tiles.
“Everyone here has lived through war. And we’re not seeing shelling yet,” he said. Besides, he added, “fear isn’t something that can save your life or your health. You need calm for that.”
The most visible sign of any distress was at banks and gas stations, where queues formed in the early morning and persisted as the day wore on. Alexander, 30, who gave only his first name, stood near a bank talking to an army officer on the street. He had just come back from the store and had loaded his backpack with canned food and other supplies.
He planned to go to a village near Kharkiv, to the northwest. “It will be calm there,” he said.
Newsletter
Breaking News
Get breaking news, investigations, analysis and more signature journalism from the Los Angeles Times in your inbox.
Enter email address
Sign Me Up
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.
Shortly after he spoke, Zelensky announced that Ukraine was formally severing ties with Russia, which had earlier pulled out its diplomatic personnel from Kyiv, before the invasion began. Zelensky exhorted “those who have not yet lost their conscience” in Russia to go out and protest against the incursion.
The assault negated weeks of frantic diplomacy to try to prevent war — and indeed came as the United Nations Security Council was in the midst of discussing the crisis in an extraordinary session.
It shatters a three-decade stretch of relative peace in Europe, which survived two world wars and a cold one in the 20th century. Even some seasoned analysts of contemporary Russia were stunned by Putin’s decision to move in, despite all the signs pointing to just such an intention, including about 190,000 Russian troops massed on three sides of Ukraine.
The West is now under heavy pressure to present a united front not only in its rhetoric but in the severity of penalties it is willing to inflict on Russia — and, as a consequence, on some of its own economies, particularly in Europe. Germany took a significant step toward that goal Wednesday when Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced that his government was halting authorization of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline project to bring Russian gas westward.
Much of Europe relies on Russian gas to heat homes and generate electricity. More than one-third of gas consumed by the 27-nation European Union is imported from Russia, making some member nations nervous over major confrontation with Moscow. The Biden administration says it has been working with European partners to secure other sources of energy for the Continent, although a rise in prices would an inevitable result.
What you should know UPDATED Feb. 23, 2022 | 10:38 PM
What are the roots of the Russia-Ukraine hostilities?
Ukraine won its independence in 1991 with the fall of the USSR. Russian President Vladimir Putin contends it was never a state.
Why is Putin obsessed with Ukraine?
There’s a Russian adage that you can’t have a Russian Empire without Ukraine, owing to its long cultural and economic history as the beating heart of the defunct Soviet Union.
What are the sanctions against Russia?
The U.S. has frozen the assets of two Russian banks and has allowed sanctions against the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline. Germany has halted the certification of the still inactive pipeline.
Want to help Ukraine? Here's how
Three organizations in California working to help those in Ukraine are Revived Soldiers Ukraine, Nova Ukraine and Hromada as well as the International Committee of the Red Cross.
Bulos reported from Slovyansk and Chu from London.