Russia-Ukraine War, Feb 24: Russia claimed that it has destroyed Ukraine’s Air Defences, and meanwhile, the Ukraine military reported that it has shot down as many as five enemy planes and a helicopter in the eastern part of the country.
Ground forces of Russia on Thursday crossed into Ukraine from several directions, Ukraine’s border guard service said, hours after President Vladimir Putin announced the launch of a major offensive.
Russian tanks and other heavy equipment crossed the frontier in several northern regions, as well as from the Kremlin-annexed peninsula of Crimea in the south, the agency said.
It said one of its servicemen died in a shelling attack along the Crimean border, the first officially confirmed military death of the Russian invasion.
Ukrainian officials informed that hundreds of Ukrainian service members believed to have been killed in Russian attacks were reported.
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Earlier, the Russian defence ministry said that Russia is targeting Ukraine’s military infrastructure, air defence, and air forces with high-precision weapons and is not attacking Ukrainian cities. Kyiv has also said Moscow has launched a full-scale attack on Ukraine, with military command centres in a number of cities hit by missiles.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky said on Thursday that Russia was attacking his country’s “military infrastructure” and border guards, but urged citizens not to panic and vowed victory. “Military infrastructure, air defence facilities, military airfields, and aviation of the Armed Forces of Ukraine are being disabled with high-precision weapons,” the defence ministry said in a statement carried by Russian news agencies.
