Dozens of soldiers killed in battles around Ukraine, officials say.

 

Michael Schwirtz, Valerie Hopkins and Andrew E. Kramer

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/02/24/world/russia-attacks-ukraine

 

Dozens of soldiers killed in battles around Ukraine, officials say.

SLOVYANSK, Ukraine — On Day 1 of the first major land war in Europe in decades, the Russian military plunged into Ukraine by land, sea and air, killing dozens of Ukrainian soldiers, and touching off a pitched battle at the highly radioactive Chernobyl exclusion zone that risked damaging the cement-encased nuclear reactor that melted down in 1986.

 

The day began before sunrise with the terrifying thud of artillery strikes on airports and military installations all over Ukraine. By sunset, Russian special forces and airborne troops had seized the Chernobyl site and were pushing into the outskirts of the capital, Kyiv. While the ultimate goal of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and his generals remained unclear, American officials assessed that the end game was likely the decapitation of Ukraine’s government and the replacement of its president, Volodymyr Zelensky, with a Russian-controlled puppet regime.

 

As of early evening Thursday, Mr. Zelensky remained in place as commander in chief, and Ukrainian forces, which officials said shot down several Russian jets and a helicopter, were engaged in fierce battles all along a broad front line to maintain control over their country.

 

It was in the toxic marshes of the Chernobyl exclusion zone in northern Ukraine that one of the most dangerous battles was playing out. Anton Herashchenko, an adviser to the interior minister, said that Ukrainian troops put up a “fierce resistance” on Thursday.

 

Should an artillery shell hit the storage unit, he warned, “radioactive dust could cover the territory of Ukraine, Belarus and the countries of the European Union.”

 

Later Thursday, Russian forces captured the power plant, according to Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to the Ukrainian president’s office. He said the condition of the plant and its nuclear waste storage facilities was unknown.

 

The site is now inside a protective zone covering about 1,000 square miles, including part of the shortest direct route from Belarus to Kyiv. Mr. Zelensky called the attack at the site “a declaration of war against the whole of Europe.”

 

 

In the end, the war appeared to be playing out exactly as the American intelligence community said it would when officials first warned about the threatening movement of Russian troops toward Ukraine’s borders last fall.

 

President Biden planned to deliver remarks on the Russian attack in the early afternoon from the White House.

 

Over many months, the Russian military moved soldiers and heavy equipment in plain view of the world, surrounding Ukraine on three sides and drawing increasingly alarmed warnings from the White House about an imminent attack. All the while, Russian leaders including Mr. Putin adamantly denied having any such intention.

 

In an early morning speech Thursday, Mr. Putin confirmed what many, including Ukraine’s own leaders, had for months refused to believe: The Russian military was moving aggressively into Ukraine.

 

More than 40 Ukrainian soldiers were killed and dozens were wounded in fighting on Thursday morning, said Oleksiy Arestovich, an adviser to Mr. Zelensky.

 

At least 18 military officials were killed in an attack outside the Black Sea port city of Odessa, where amphibious commandos from the Russian Navy came ashore, according to Sergey Nazarov, an aide to Odessa’s mayor.

 

Explosions rang out around Odessa at about 10:30 a.m., sending firefighters scurrying to put out blazes and rescue people in the vicinity, according to the city’s emergency services agency. By noon, however, the fighting in Odessa appeared to have subsided,  said Mr. Nazarov.

 

Ukrainian forces said they had shot down several Russian fighter aircraft and a helicopter in an increasingly intense battle to maintain control over key cities. Ukrainian troops had also repelled Russian advances on two major cities: Chernihiv in the north, near the Belarus border, and Kharkiv in the northeast, close to Russia, a senior Ukrainian military official said.

 

Video verified by The Times showed at least half a dozen Russian helicopters flying west over the Dnieper river toward Hostomel, a town on the outskirts of the capital, with some helicopters apparently attacking Hostomel’s airport. One video released by Ukraine’s armed forces appeared to show at least one of those helicopters being shot down.

 

The Ukrainian Army is badly outgunned and outmanned by Russian forces, but in one indication that it was mounting a resistance, two Russian armored personnel carriers were seen damaged, one crashed into a tree, in the eastern Ukrainian town of Shchastya early Thursday.

 

In Kramatorsk, in eastern Ukraine, about 100 men, ranging in age from their 20s to 50s, turned up at a military recruitment office even as the dull thuds of explosions could be heard from the direction of the town’s military airport.

 

They packed into a corridor and filled out forms to join the military, heeding a call from Ukraine’s defense minister, Oleksiy Reznikov, who asked all able citizens to immediately enlist with the country’s territorial defense units.

 

“The enemy is attacking, but our army is indestructible,” he said. “Ukraine is moving into all-out defense mode.”