The sound of gunfire was heard in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, during the recording of Russian tanks entering the city for the first time.
The Ministry of Defense in Ukraine has urged those living in the northern outskirts of Kyiv – where tanks are being fired – to make firebombs “to reduce the enemy”.
During the night, the city was hit by an explosion, which destroyed at least one block of flats and injured several residents.
Russia has denied the strikes.
An unnamed Russian Ministry of Defense source also claimed that the plane that landed over Kyiv belonged to Ukraine, Reuters news agency reported. Ukraine said the plane was Russian.
With the start of the second day of the war, Moscow – attacking from the east, north and south – seems to be on a solid Kyiv. Fighting was reported between the two sides, and Ukrainian troops set off a bridge trying to slow down Russia’s development.
Residents north of Obolon were told to stay home to avoid a “military attack” by city officials on Friday, Reuters reported. Obolon is the same place where it appears that the tanks were recorded earlier in the day.
The Department of Defense has already urged the citizens of the region on its Facebook page to “inform us of military movements, make Molotov cocktails [bombs] and reduce the enemy”.
During the night, families hid at Kyiv municipal stations when a plane crash hit the city, which includes a large population of Pozniake, and injured at least eight people.
“Putin, we want to see you slaughtered like an animal,” a Kyiv resident told Nick Beake of the BBC.
“How can we live with it in our time?” Oxana Gulenko questioned Reuters while cleaning a broken glass in a single explosion. “We have to think. Putin should be burned in hell with his whole family.”
“They [the Russians] say that non-publicity is not intentional. It is a lie,” said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in a video released Friday morning. “The reality is that they do not see the difference in what they mean.”
Ukraine says at least 137 people have been killed – civilians and soldiers – as UN figures suggest more than 100,000 people have fled their homes. Suddenly, at least 1,000 Ukrainians arrived by train from the southeastern Polish city of Przemysl alone.
British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace has said the UK estimates Russia has lost 450 workers since Moscow began its offensive on Thursday morning after weeks of tensions, as Russia has mobilized troops across the country.
President Vladimir Putin – who declared war on his television address – has threatened any country that tries to disrupt “results you have never seen”.
Western intelligence officials have previously warned that Russia is building a “superpower” to control Kyiv, although airstrikes and missiles strike cities and military bases across the country, with tanks entering three sides of Ukraine’s main border.
Faced with a difficult situation, Ukrainian President Zelensky vowed to continue fighting. He said the “new iron curtain” was starting to work and his job was to ensure that his country remained on its Western side.
There have been reports of tremendous courage – including 13 border guards on a small island in the Black Sea who refused to surrender to a Russian warship and were killed in a massacre.
President Zelensky said they would be honored with a war hero.
On Thursday another fight broke out at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant site. Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhaylo Podolyak said the nuclear base itself had been lost following a “difficult war”.
On Friday, a nuclear power plant in Ukraine said it was recording high levels of radiation in the region. A statement from Russia’s Defense Ministry said the standards were “normal” and added to the agreement “to ensure the safety of the power plant and the sarcophagus of the Chernobyl Nuclear Plant”.
Many say that it would not, would not, happen. Not in 2022.
For weeks, Western officials have been spying on intelligence to warn of a plot to assassinate President Putin.
For weeks I have been asking the Ukrainian people in Kyiv about it, and I have gone through all the foreign and defense ministers, all the Russian observers I met at last weekend’s security conference in Munich.
It didn’t make sense. I did not cover.
And now, hour after hour, Russian forces and the battlefield are getting closer and closer to Kyiv.
The city where the Ukrainian people tell us all to “call it Kyiv in Ukrainian, not Kiev in Russian”, a city that sounds like European, is now seen in Moscow.
“Thinking failure” is how former British intelligence chief Sir Alex Younger described it, adding that, “we thought history had changed in 1991” with the fall of the Soviet regime.
Mr. Zelensky ordered registrars and reservists from all regions of Ukraine to be called up for military service. The country’s defense minister has called on anyone with a weapon to take part in an effort to oust Russia.
Human rights groups have warned ahead of time that the attack could lead to a major refugee crisis in Europe.
Western leaders have expressed shock and anger at the level of attacks. The UK, EU and other allies have vowed to impose new sanctions on Moscow, but say they will not send troops.
French President Emmanuel Macron held a phone call with his Russian counterpart, during which time it was Mr. Putin’s first conversation with a Western leader in recent days.
Mr. Macron demanded “immediate suspension” of the attack and threatened Mr Putin with “severe sanctions”, the French government said. The Kremlin, however, simply stated that the two had “serious and straightforward opinions”.