The smell of blood and sounds of gunfire and wailing car alarms woke residents in Kyiv on Friday as Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine’s capital city for the first time.
Air-raid sirens blared as hundreds of people huddled together in makeshift shelters or in crowded underground subways as the intense fighting continued.
Kyiv’s mayor and former world heavyweight boxing champion Vitali Klitschko told scared residents that the city had entered a “phase of defense” and said Russian shelling had sliced through an apartment building, destroyed bridges, and damaged schools.
Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense called on those living in the northern outskirts of the city to make fire bombs to keep soldiers at bay, but their attempts so far have been futile as the Vladimir Putin-ordered blitz continued to batter the Eastern European country.
Shocked resident Yurii Zhyhanov asked out loud, “What are you doing? What is this?”
Like so many others in his home city, he grabbed what belongings he could, took his mother, and fled, leaving the life he knew behind him.
In other parts of Kyiv, the body of a dead soldier lay in the snow near an underpass. Fragments of a downed aircraft smoked as black plastic was draped over body parts found beside them.
“We’re all scared and worried,” 20-year-old Lucy Vashaka told the Associated Press.
About 40 miles northwest of Kyiv in Ivankiv, journalists saw “significant signs of fighting.”
Russian troops also entered the city of Sumy, located near the border with Russia. And a missile launcher was also seen on the outskirts of Kharkiv in the east, the Associated Press reported.
A U.S. defense official on Friday confirmed a robust Russian amphibious assault was underway, with thousands of Russian naval infantry moving ashore from the Sea of Azov, west of Mariupol, in the south of the Donetsk Oblast.
The official told reporters that Ukrainian air defenses had been degraded but were still operating. Russia, the official said, had fired more than 200 missiles into neighboring Ukraine.
The three-pronged assault is the largest ground war Europe has seen since World War II, and there are few signs of it stopping any time soon.
Russia’s Defense Ministry spokesman said Russian forces have blocked Kyiv’s access from the west at Hostomel Airport — though Ukrainian officials maintain they continue to control the facility. However, airspace over Ukraine remains murky, with no one in control, the Pentagon said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that 137 Ukrainians have been killed and 316 wounded after the first day of fighting, and he reiterated that Russians were purposely targeting civilian areas.
More than 50,000 Ukrainians have fled the country in less than 48 hours, mostly to Poland and Moldova, according to the United Nations’s high commissioner for refugees, Filippo Grandi. The U.N.’s refugee agency also said that as many as 100,000 Ukrainians have been displaced from their homes because of the broad attacks from Russia.
Zelensky posted a video on social media on Friday night, standing alongside several government officials in an undisclosed location, and said Ukraine’s leaders had not fled Kyiv.
Zelensky also pleaded with Western leaders to act faster to cut off Russia’s economy and come to Ukraine’s aid with military assistance.
He spoke with President Joe Biden on Friday and tweeted that the leaders had discussed “strengthening sanctions, concrete defense assistance, and an anti-war coalition.”
The Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development also took steps Friday to freeze Russia out of the international economic body.
As the West worked on ways to blunt Putin’s assault, Zelensky addressed the Russian president directly, saying, “There are fights all over the country. Let’s sit down.”
The Kremlin accepted his offer to hold talks but weary Western officials warned it might be a ploy to squeeze concessions out of Zelensky and not a gesture of goodwill to end the ground, sea, and air assault with a diplomatic solution.
