President Vladimir Putin of Russia declared the start of a “special military operation” in Ukraine on Thursday, after months of speculation about Russia’s intentions as it massed tens of thousands of troops on Ukraine’s border.
Addressing his nation in a televised speech broadcast just before 6 a.m. Thursday, Putin said his goal was to “demilitarize” but not occupy the country.
Minutes later, large explosions were visible near Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, and blasts were reported in Kyiv, the capital, and other parts of the country.
Ukraine’s Interior Ministry said that Russian troops had landed in Odessa and were crossing the border.
“The invasion has begun,” the ministry said in a statement.
Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, said on Twitter that Putin had “started a full-scale war against Ukraine” and had begun shelling civilian cities.
“This is a war of aggression,” he wrote on Twitter. “Ukraine will defend itself and win. The world must act and stop Putin. It is time to act — immediately.”
Evoking the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999 and the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, Putin cast his action as a long overdue strike against an U.S.-led world order that he described as an “empire of lies.”
Even as he spoke, the United Nations Security Council held an emergency meeting imploring him not to invade.
Putin said he was acting after receiving a plea for assistance from the leaders of the Russian-backed separatist territories formed in eastern Ukraine in 2014 — a move that Western officials had predicted as a possible pretext for an invasion.
Putin also described the operation as a response to a “question of life or death” that he said Russia was facing as a result of the eastward expansion of the NATO alliance — which Ukraine has aspired to join.
“This is that red line that I talked about multiple times,” Putin said. “They have crossed it.”
The operation’s goal, Putin said, was “to defend people who for eight years are suffering persecution and genocide by the Kyiv regime,” citing the false accusation that Ukrainian forces had been carrying out ethnic cleansing in separatist regions of eastern Ukraine.
In bellicose language, Putin also issued what appeared to be a warning to other countries.
“Anyone who tries to interfere with us, or even more so, to create threats for our country and our people, must know that Russia’s response will be immediate and will lead you to such consequences as you have never before experienced in your history,” Putin said. “We are ready for any turn of events.”
In a statement, President Joe Biden placed responsibility for the conflict squarely on Putin’s shoulders.
“President Putin has chosen a premeditated war that will bring a catastrophic loss of life and human suffering,” Biden said. “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. The world will hold Russia accountable.”
He added that he would address the American people on Thursday about “further consequences” the United States and its allies would impose on Russia.
On Wednesday, Ukraine had mobilized its reservists and declared a 30-day state of emergency as cyberattacks knocked out government institutions including parliament, the Foreign Ministry and the Cabinet of ministers.
In Kyiv, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy made an impassioned bid earlier in the day to spare his nation from war, appealing directly to the Russian people to remember their ties to Ukraine.
“Listen to the voice of reason,” Zelenskyy said in a nationally televised address early Thursday, adding that Kremlin propaganda painting Ukrainians as aggressors was a lie. “The people of Ukraine want peace, the authorities in Ukraine want peace.”
The West unveiled new sanctions targeting Putin’s inner circle, with threats of tighter measures if Russia escalated hostilities, but a senior Russian diplomat denigrated the idea that pressure would alter Russia’s course, suggesting that the sanctions would only create economic pain for the West.
In Washington on Wednesday, the Pentagon said that 190,000 Russian troops and separatist forces were poised along the Ukrainian border and that 80% of them were positioned for combat.
“They are ready to go,” John Kirby, the top Pentagon spokesperson, told reporters.
Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., who leads the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Russia’s invasion of Ukraine had brought decades of general peace in Europe to an end.
“While there is still an opportunity for Russia to reverse course, we can no longer hold out hope that this standoff will be resolved peacefully,” Warner said. “Therefore, we must all, on both sides of the aisle and both sides of the Atlantic, work together to demonstrate to Putin that this aggression will not be allowed to go unpunished.”
Several hundred Russian mercenaries from the Wagner paramilitary group had arrived in the separatist regions of Donetsk and Luhansk even before Putin announced the military operation Thursday, according to two senior European security officials.
The commandos, with experience fighting in Syria and Libya, were flown into Crimea, a peninsula annexed by Russia after sending in troops in 2014, and have since trickled into the rebel-held territories covertly in civilian clothes, the officials said.
Cyberattacks, another component of Russia’s assault on Ukraine, continued Wednesday. The websites of various Ukrainian government institutions, including parliament, the Foreign Ministry and the Cabinet of ministers, crashed after a denial-of-service attack.
In Zelenskyy’s speech, delivered in Russian, he conceded that his appeal would probably not be heard in Russia, where the media is largely state-controlled, and said that an attempt to call Putin directly was met with silence.
Zelenskyy changed tack toward the end, warning that Ukrainians would fight to repel any attack.
“We won’t attack, but we will defend ourselves,” he said. “By attacking, you will see our faces — not our backs, but our faces.”
Earlier, Ukraine’s Security Council declared a 30-day state of national emergency in response to the threat of a Russian invasion. The government urged Ukrainian citizens in Russia to leave. Russia, in turn, began withdrawing more diplomats from Ukraine.
Ukraine’s parliament also began formally working on plans for a law that would allow civilians to own firearms, one day after Zelenskyy called up military reservists to fight for their country before it disappears.
The list of sanctions imposed on Russia continued to grow, with European leaders expected to hold an emergency summit in Brussels on Thursday to discuss further steps. So far the sanctions have avoided steps that would harm Europe, like targeting the energy sector.
On Wednesday, the European Union announced sanctions on various high-profile Russian officials and media figures, including the defense minister, Sergei Shoigu, and Putin’s chief of staff, Anton Vaino.
Australia, Canada and Japan also unveiled sanctions. And the White House announced a second round of sanctions, on the company building the gas pipeline connecting Russia to Germany.
Russia’s ambassador to the United States responded defiantly, saying that the country was used to living under such sanctions from the West and that the new penalties would hurt global financial and energy markets as well as Americans.
“It is hard to imagine that there is a person in Washington who expects Russia to revise its foreign policy under a threat of restrictions,” the ambassador, Anatoly Antonov, said on Facebook.
Ukraine welcomed the measures but called for even tougher restrictions against Russia.