<\/p>\n
Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a military operation in Ukraine on Thursday with explosions heard across the country and its foreign minister warning a \u201cfull-scale invasion\u201d was underway.<\/p>\n
Weeks of intense diplomacy and the imposition of Western sanctions on Russia failed to deter Putin, who had massed between 150,000 and 200,000 troops along the borders of Ukraine.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have made the decision of a military operation,\u201d Putin said in a surprise television announcement that triggered immediate condemnation from US President Joe Biden and other Western leaders, and sent global financial markets into turmoil.<\/p>\n
Shortly after the announcement, explosions were heard in Ukraine\u2019s capital, Kyiv, and several other cities, according to AFP correspondents.<\/p>\n
Ukrainian border guards reported being under attack along the Russian and Belarusian frontiers.<\/p>\n
Ukraine\u2019s President Volodymyr Zelensky declared martial law and said Russia was attacking his country\u2019s \u201cmilitary infrastructure\u201d, but urged citizens not to panic and vowed victory.<\/p>\n
His foreign minister said the worst-case scenario was playing out.<\/p>\n
\u201cPutin has just launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Peaceful Ukrainian cities are under strikes,\u201d Dmytro Kuleba tweeted.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a war of aggression. Ukraine will defend itself and will win. The world can and must stop Putin. The time to act is now.\u201d<\/p>\n
Within a few hours of Putin\u2019s speech, Russia\u2019s defence ministry said it had neutralised Ukrainian military airbases and its air defence systems.<\/p>\n
In his televised address, Putin justified the operation by claiming the government was overseeing a \u201cgenocide\u201d in the east of the country.<\/p>\n
The Kremlin had earlier said rebel leaders in eastern Ukraine had asked Moscow for military help against Kyiv.<\/p>\n
Biden, who had for weeks sought to lead a Western alliance to deter Putin from invading Ukraine, spoke with Zelensky after the Russian operation began to vow US \u201csupport\u201d and \u201cassistance\u201d.<\/p>\n
Biden condemned the \u201cunprovoked and unjustified attack by Russian military forces,\u201d and urged world leaders to speak out against Putin\u2019s \u201cflagrant aggression\u201d.<\/p>\n
He also vowed Russia would be held accountable.<\/p>\n
\u201cPresident Putin has chosen a premeditated war that will bring a catastrophic loss of life and human suffering,\u201d he said in a statement.<\/p>\n
\u201cRussia 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.<\/p>\n
Biden was due to join a virtual, closed-door meeting of G7 leaders \u2014 Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States \u2014 on Thursday.<\/p>\n
The G7 meeting is likely to result in more sanctions against Russia, which had long claimed it would not invade Ukraine, despite massing troops on the country\u2019s borders.<\/p>\n
\u2013 \u2018Aggression\u2019<\/p>\n
An excuse for the military operation was given on Wednesday when the Kremlin said the separatist leaders of Donetsk and Lugansk had sent separate letters to Putin, asking him to \u201chelp them repel Ukraine\u2019s aggression\u201d.<\/p>\n
Their reported appeals came after Putin recognised their independence and signed friendship treaties with them that include defence deals.<\/p>\n
The United Nations Security Council had met late Wednesday for its second emergency session in three days over the crisis, with a personal plea there by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres coinciding with Putin\u2019s announcement.<\/p>\n
\u201cPresident Putin, in the name of humanity, bring your troops back to Russia,\u201d Guterres said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the name of humanity, do not allow to start in Europe what could be the worst war since the beginning of the century.\u201d<\/p>\n
The US ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, warned that an all-out Russian invasion could displace five million people, triggering a new European refugee crisis.<\/p>\n
\u2013 Living in fear \u2013<\/p>\n
Western nations said ahead of Thursday\u2019s operation Russia had amassed 150,000 troops in combat formations on Ukraine\u2019s borders with Russia, Belarus and Russian-occupied Crimea and on warships in the Black Sea.<\/p>\n
Ukraine has around 200,000 military personnel, and could boost that with up to 250,000 reservists.<\/p>\n
Moscow\u2019s total forces are much larger \u2014 around a million active-duty personnel \u2014 and have been modernised and re-armed in recent years.<\/p>\n
But Ukraine has received advanced anti-tank weapons and some drones from NATO members. More have been promised as the allies try to deter a Russian attack or at least make it costly.<\/p>\n
Shelling had intensified in recent days between Ukrainian forces and Russia-backed separatists \u2014 a Ukrainian soldier was killed on Wednesday, the sixth in four days \u2014 and civilians living near the front were fearful.<\/p>\n
Dmitry Maksimenko, a 27-year-old coal miner from government-held Krasnogorivka, told AFP that he was shocked when his wife came to tell him that Putin had recognised the two Russian-backed separatist enclaves.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe said: \u2018Have you heard the news?\u2019. How could I have known? There\u2019s no electricity, never mind internet. I don\u2019t know what is going to happen next, but to be honest, I\u2019m afraid,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Russia has long demanded that Ukraine be forbidden from ever joining the NATO alliance and that US troops pull out from Eastern Europe.<\/p>\n
Speaking to journalists, Putin on Tuesday set out a number of stringent conditions if the West wanted to de-escalate the crisis, saying Ukraine should drop its NATO ambition and become neutral.<\/p>\n
\n\t<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a military operation in Ukraine on Thursday with explosions heard across the country and its foreign minister warning a \u201cfull-scale invasion\u201d was underway. Weeks of intense diplomacy and the imposition of Western sanctions on Russia failed to deter Putin, who had massed between 150,000 and 200,000 troops along the borders […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1003232,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[187],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1003231","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1003231","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1003231"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1003231\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1003231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1003231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1003231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}