Kyiv Feb. 25, 5:12 p.m.
Moscow Feb. 25, 6:12 p.m.
Washington Feb. 25, 10:12 a.m.
Live Updates: Russian Troops Enter Kyiv as Moscow Pushes to Topple Ukraine’s Government
President Vladimir Putin said he was open to talks after Kyiv said it would discuss adopting “neutral status.” Earlier, Russia’s foreign minister said Moscow would not negotiate until Ukraine stopped fighting.
Ukrainians on Friday braced for a violent battle for their capital, Kyiv, as officials warned residents to stay indoors and “prepare Molotov cocktails” to defend against advancing Russian forces who had entered a northern district of the city. Russia signaled that it was open to talks with the Ukrainian government, but it was unclear what the conditions were.
As missile strikes hammered Kyiv and a rocket crashed into a residential building, President Volodymyr Zelensky urged Ukrainians to defend the country, saying that no foreign troops were coming to their aid. Here is what else is happening in the Russian attack:
A Kremlin spokesman said that President Vladimir V. Putin was prepared to send representatives to Belarus for talks with a Ukrainian delegation. The offer came after Mr. Putin spoke with China’s top leader, Xi Jinping. The spokesman said that the Russian offer came on the heels of a comment by Mr. Zelensky that he was ready to discuss “neutral status” for Ukraine.
The European Union will freeze the assets of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and his foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, but will not impose a travel ban on them, according to two diplomats familiar with the draft E.U. sanctions that have not yet been fully published.
Mr. Zelensky said that 137 Ukrainian soldiers and civilians had been killed in the Russian invasion that began on Thursday. The United Nations reported a lower tally of casualties but said that any figures were probably an undercount.
Ukrainian refugees crossed into northwestern Romania on foot days after Russia invadaded Ukraine.
Reporting from Paris
President Emmanuel Macron France, in a statement to Parliament, said France is in talks with Ukraine to provide them defensive equipment. And he made comments on the recent E.U. sanctions, which he says will have consequences for the French as well, but were necessary as part of the “defense of our values.”
Reporting from Moscow
Mr. Putin has used these speeches all week to announce major news. On Friday, he described the leadership in Ukraine as having taken “hostage the entire Ukrainian people.”
Reporting from Moscow
President Vladimir V. Putin delivered brief public remarks aired on Russian state television. He called on Ukrainian soldiers to lay down their arms, while describing President Volodymyr Zelensky’s government as a “band of drug addicts and neo-Nazis.”
Lviv Dispatch
LVIV, Ukraine — With fighting in eastern Ukraine intensifying and Kyiv, the capital, under siege, an exodus of tired, frightened people gathered pace on Friday.
They came with what they could carry, in packed train cars with the windows closed and the lights off so as not to be a target for Russian missiles. Through the night, they traveled 20 hours or more to reach the relative safety of Lviv, a city in western Ukraine that has long been a bastion of patriotic fervor and is increasingly the heart of the resistance.
Even as a flood of humanity moved west, soldiers were headed in the other direction to join the fight. Lviv’s grand train station, with soldiers smoking and women kissing their men goodbye on the platform, felt like a movie set from an era long past, an era when war gripped Europe.
Given reports of Russian saboteurs, soldiers at the station viewed the approach of a stranger with suspicion. But one young man, who declined to give his name, agreed to chat to a New York Times reporter with the assistance of a translation service on the Telegram messaging app.
“Are you going to fight,” I wrote.
“Yes,” he replied.
“Are you scared?”
“No.”
“How long will this war last?”
“The war has been going on for more than eight years, and how much more will be, no one knows,” he replied. “But the Ukrainian people will remain free!”
That belief was widespread if of little comfort to the people who flooded the ornate station. None of the scores of people I spoke to on Friday knew how long they would be gone or what would be left when they returned.
“I won’t come back in the near time unless something change, I don’t know,” said a man named Dymitri. “I have faith in our army, in our guys and girls on the front lines, they are strong. It is our land and I fully believe in them. On to victory.”
The people who came to the station were all ages, men and women. But the women were preparing to spend time alone as nearly all men of fighting age in Ukraine have been drafted in the war effort.
A woman named Anastasia had fled the city of Kharkiv with her mother and 7-year-old daughter. She said her friends were huddled in metro stations or shelters, waiting for an aerial attack. Asked why this was happening, she had a simple answer.
“Putin’s crazy. He is out of his mind,” she said, referring to Russia’s leader, Vladimir V. Putin. “He’s Hitler.”
In a moment of deep uncertainty, that was where most people found agreement.
Anton, a resident of Dnipro, had decided to move west after a rocket attack struck a military installation near where he lives.
Asked the worst case for how things might go, he said, “Nuclear war.”
Asked for the best-case scenario, he said, “Putin dies.”
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In the latest step in the business world to isolate Russia, the organizers of the World Mobile Congress, which starts on Monday in Barcelona, said they were removing the Russian pavilion to protest the war in Ukraine. The organizers said they strongly condemn the invasion.
Reporting from Lviv, Ukraine
Kyiv’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko, said the situation in the capital “is difficult and tense.” He urged residents to be vigilant and shelter in underground metro stations when air raid sirens go off. “The enemy wants to bring the capital to its knees and destroy us,” he said. “Everyone who can defend the city must join and help our soldiers.”
Reporting from Istanbul
Turkey cannot stop Russian warships from accessing the Black Sea via its waters, something Ukraine has demanded. Foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, argued in a local newspaper, that international norms allow Turkey to block war vessels. But, some clauses of the treaty allows ships to return to their home base, allowing Russian vessels to go back to the Black Sea, Mr. Cavusoglu said.
MOSCOW — In the early years of Vladimir V. Putin’s tenure, Russia’s military struggled to keep submarines afloat in the Arctic and an outgunned insurgency at bay in Chechnya. Senior officers sometimes lived in moldy, rat-infested tenements. Instead of socks, poorly trained soldiers often wrapped their feet in swaths of cloth, as their Soviet and Tsarist predecessors had.
Two decades later, it is a far different fighting force attacking Ukraine: a modern, sophisticated army with precision-guided weaponry, a newly streamlined command structure and well-fed and professional soldiers. The modernized military has emerged as a key tool of Mr. Putin’s foreign policy, capturing Crimea, intervening in Syria, keeping the peace between Armenia and Azerbaijan and, this year, propping up a Russia-friendly leader in Kazakhstan.
Now it is in the middle of its most ambitious — and most ominous — operation yet: using force to rein Ukraine back into Moscow’s sphere of influence.
“The mobility of the military, its preparedness and its equipment are what allow Russia to pressure Ukraine and to pressure the West,” said Pavel Luzin, a Russian security analyst. “Nuclear weapons are not enough.”
The Ukraine intervention represents Mr. Putin’s highest-stakes use of his military to muscle Russia back into the global relevance it lost with the collapse of the Soviet Union three decades ago.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said on Friday that its forces had blocked Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, from the western side by capturing a key airfield about 10 miles west of the city.
Speaking in a situation room in Moscow, the ministry’s spokesman, Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov, said that two groups of Russian paratroopers met around the Antonov airfield in the town of Hostomel about 10 miles northwest of Kyiv. Videos on Thursday showed Russian helicopters flying into Hostomel, where they came under fire from Ukrainian forces.
The Russian military’s claims could not be independently verified, but the Ukrainian government confirmed that Russian troops have captured the area around Chernobyl nuclear plant north of Hostomel.
While capturing the airfield, Russian servicemen killed more than 200 members of the Ukrainian Special Forces, said General Konashenkov. He also claimed that Moscow-backed separatist forces had made significant advances in eastern Ukraine, with help from Russian artillery fire.
In an earlier statement, the Russian Defense Ministry said that its forces had destroyed 118 military facilities in Ukraine, including airfields and missile systems, and downed approximately a dozen Ukrainian military aircraft.
More than 150 Ukrainian servicemen gave up arms, the statement said.
The spokesman for Ukraine’s presidential office denied that any Ukrainian forces had surrendered, saying that the country’s soldiers “demonstrate fantastic heroism.” Ukraine’s Defense Ministry, for its part, tweeted that Russian forces had suffered more than a thousand “losses,” but did not offer details.
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Continue reading the main storyAt a weapons storage facility in Fastiv, Ukraine, I saw volunteers line up to receive their weapons on Friday after the Ukrainian government’s announcement that it would arm civilians to resist the Russian invasion. Once armed, they took cover as jets flew overhead.
The Kremlin said on Friday that it was ready for talks with Ukraine after President Volodymyr Zelensky said he was ready to discuss a “neutral status” for his country. But the conditions for such negotiations were not immediately clear as the Russian military signaled that it could be preparing an assault on the Ukrainian capital.
A Kremlin spokesman said that President Vladimir V. Putin was prepared to send a delegation to Belarus for talks with Ukrainian officials. Mr. Peskov was responding to comments by Mr. Zelensky in a video address early Friday in which he declared that Ukraine was “not afraid” of talks on “security guarantees for our country and its neutral status.”
“As you know, today the President of Ukraine Zelensky announced his readiness to discuss the neutral status of Ukraine,” the spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, said in remarks reported by Russian news agencies. “In this context, in response to Zelensky’s proposal, Vladimir Putin is ready to send a Russian delegation to Minsk at the level of representatives of the Ministry of Defense, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the presidential administration for negotiations with the Ukrainian delegation.”
The Kremlin said it was ready for talks after Mr. Putin held a call with Xi Jinping, the Chinese leader.
Whether such a proposal was viable or made in good faith was not immediately clear.
Belarus, the Kremlin’s closest ally and Ukraine’s northern neighbor, has helped Mr. Putin carry out his invasion of Ukraine by hosting thousands of Russian troops who poured over the border into Ukraine. And just minutes before Mr. Peskov’s statement, Russia’s Defense Ministry issued its own statement that appeared to menace Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, with an assault.
Russian airborne forces had blocked Kyiv from the west on Friday, the Defense Ministry claimed, after capturing an airfield in the area in an assault that used “more than 200 Russian helicopters.”
The ministry also claimed that Ukrainian forces were positioning weaponry in residential areas of Kyiv to use civilians as “a human shield,” but promised that Russia would make “no strikes on residential areas of the Ukrainian capital.”
Reporting from Lviv, Ukraine
There was a noticeable shift in the mood in this city on the second day of war. The sense of security was replaced by edgy anger and growing exhaustion. The incessant wail of air raid alarms. The frantic calls from friends for a place to stay. The failed bids to find a way to get to the border. All this while watching reports shared from friends in Kyiv and Kharkhiv and other cities where the fight was raging. Just 48 hours ago it was filled with music and the European charm that had made it a magnet for tourists.
Reporting from Lviv, Ukraine
Ukraine’s foreign minister accused Russian forces of attacking a kindergarten and an orphanage, calling the attacks “war crimes and violations of the Rome Statute,” which established the International Criminal Court. He said the Ukrainian authorities would send evidence of the attacks to The Hague, tweeting, “Responsibility is inevitable.”
Today’s Russian attacks on a kindergarten and an orphanage are war crimes and violations of the Rome Statute. Together with the General Prosecutor’s Office we are collecting this and other facts, which we will immediately send to the Hague. Responsibility is inevitable.
— Dmytro Kuleba (@DmytroKuleba) February 25, 2022
Video captured by citizens and journalists in Ukraine on Friday morning showed people sheltering in Kyiv, the capital, as fighting can be heard in the background after reports that Russian troops were closing in.
Elsewhere in Ukraine, air-raid sirens could be heard in the city of Lviv in the early morning hours, and in Kherson, a motorist recorded powerful explosions near his vehicle.
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On Friday morning, Prime Minister Mario Draghi of Italy addressed Parliament about the situation in Ukraine, making an emotional aside about the “really dramatic moment” by saying President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine had reached out to schedule a telephone call.
“But it was no longer possible to make the phone call,” Mr. Draghi said, appearing moved by the gravity of the situation. “He was no longer available.”
The sense from Mr. Draghi’s words was clearly meant to be ominous, that the ravages of war had prevented the Ukrainian from keeping the appointment.
But something was clearly lost in translation, and Mr. Zelensky apparently read the comments as an insult.
“Today at 10:30 am at the entrances to Chernihiv, Hostomel and Melitopol there were heavy fighting. People died. Next time I’ll try to move the war schedule to talk to #MarioDraghi at a specific time,” Mr. Zelensky tweeted.
“Meanwhile, Ukraine continues to fight for its people.”
After Mr. Zelensky’s remarks started spreading on social media, the Italian government said it was trying to clear up the misunderstanding.
BRUSSELS — The European Union will freeze the assets of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and his foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, but will not impose a travel ban on them, two diplomats familiar with the draft E.U. sanctions said on Friday.
The news, which was reported earlier by The Financial Times, came just hours after European leaders meeting into the early hours of Friday hammered out an agreement over a new set of sanctions that they said would hurt the Russian economy and put Mr. Putin under tremendous pressure as his troops advanced in their invasion of Ukraine.
The bloc’s 27 members had been able to push out a first set of sanctions on Wednesday in response to Mr. Putin’s recognition of separatist enclaves in Ukraine, and they did so in record time.
But the second package of penalties, which they described as unprecedented for the European Union in terms of size and reach, was harder to forge consensus on, even as Russian forces approached Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, and war in Europe was no longer a theoretical concept, but a devastating reality.
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President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia accused the United States and NATO of ignoring Russia’s “reasonable” security concerns and continually reneging on their commitments in a phone call on Friday afternoon with China’s leader, Xi Jinping, according to a readout of the call released by the Chinese state news media.
Mr. Putin told Mr. Xi that Russia was willing to enter “high-level negotiations” with Ukraine, the readout said, without offering details. Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, indicated at a news conference on Friday that Moscow would not negotiate until Ukraine stops resisting Russia’s military advance.
Referring to eastern Ukraine, where Russian forces have intervened to help Moscow-backed separatists seize more territory since Thursday, Mr. Xi said the situation had “undergone rapid changes.” He reiterated China’s previous stance that it was important to respect the “legitimate security concerns” as well as the “sovereignty and territorial integrity” of all countries.
As Mr. Xi and Mr. Putin have forged a closer relationship, in opposition to what they see as a U.S.-dominated global order, China has struggled to strike a balance in the Ukraine crisis between supporting Russia and maintaining its long-held principle of protecting individual nations’ sovereignty.
Beijing said on Friday that it supported the holding of negotiations between Russia and Ukraine.
Mr. Xi said that China was willing to work with all parties to “firmly safeguard the international system with the United Nations at its core and an international order founded on international law.”
Poland will close its airspace to Russian airlines, Poland’s prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, said on Friday.
Reporting from Moscow
Russia now says that it is ready for talks with Ukraine, but the details are unclear. A Kremlin spokesman said that President Vladimir V. Putin was prepared to send representatives to Minsk, Belarus, for talks with a Ukrainian delegation. The spokesman said that the Russian offer comes on the heels of a comment by President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine earlier on Friday that he was ready to discuss Ukraine’s “neutral status.”
PAVLOGRAD, Ukraine — As the Ukrainian army went to war on Thursday, so did an army of volunteers and activists who for years have propped up the country’s poorly funded military with donated warm clothing, medical equipment, walkie-talkies and even food.
In the fighting between the armies of two nation states, this type of grass-roots support for the military might not seem very relevant. But it played a pivotal role in the more limited Russian incursions in 2014 and 2015. And the dozens of well-organized volunteer groups hold the potential today to resist Russian soldiers if they remain as occupiers.
“We were getting ready for this for years,” said Yuri Skribets, a neurosurgeon who volunteers as a battlefield paramedic. He belongs to the Medical Battalion Hospitaliers, based here in this eastern Ukrainian town now just a few hours’ drive from the reported positions of advancing Russian troops.
In a brick warehouse converted into their headquarters, with a giant wood stove blazing, the volunteer paramedics spent Thursday packing backpacks and pouches with emergency medical supplies, mostly just what was needed to stanch bleeding: tourniquets, coagulating agent, bandages.
The organization of volunteer doctors and paramedics has operated for years along the frontline of the eastern Ukraine war, where Russian-backed separatists have been fighting Ukrainian forces. The volunteers take military casualties to a civilian hospital to ease the burden on the army, and it was with a blend of anger and determination that they prepared for a possibly far bigger task today.
“The whole world is weak,” said Mr. Skribets. “Nobody really resisted Putin, and this is the result.”
On a wall hang portraits of eight volunteer medics from the group killed in fighting in the east, which began in 2014 but was always confined to a slice of Ukraine, in contrast to the much broader attack begun by Russia on Thursday.
Votive candles stood on a shelf below the portraits, and some items to remember the volunteers: uniform patches, a small collection of jagged shrapnel, photographs.
The government of President Volodymyr Zelensky over the past year has tried to formalize the work of such organizations, which range from mild-mannered nongovernmental groups to armed and politically active paramilitaries, into a national group under military command, called the Territorial Defense Forces. This work picked up last fall, as Russia massed troops.
The Defense Forces together with independent groups are seen as the kernel of a potential insurgency against Russian occupation.
“A lot of ordinary people are ready to resist if officials in Kyiv give up,” said Oleksandr Isenko, a volunteer paramedic. Has the medical wing of this movement laid plans to treat wounded fighters in secret locations? “No comment,” he responded.
Anna Fedyanovich, the deputy director of the group, said all the medical supplies are donated, and doctors and nurses volunteer their time.
“I think our army won’t allow an occupation,” she said, but didn’t sound too hopeful. Citing a statement President Biden made before the Russian attack, she said, “Russia has a list of volunteers and patriots” to arrest.
That means people like her. She worried members of the group would be quickly betrayed by neighbors in a town where pro-Russian sentiment is common, should the Russian army turn up.
“Everybody has a neighbor who is ready to betray them,” she said. “I don’t know how I could remain here and not be arrested, maybe tortured,” she said. “It’s hard to imagine staying here.”
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Continue reading the main storyReporting from Brussels
The European Union will freeze the assets of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and the Russian foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, but will not impose a travel ban on them, according to two diplomats familiar with the draft E.U. sanctions that have not yet been fully published.
In the second major sporting event to be dropped from Russia on Friday, F1 canceled the Russian Grand Prix, scheduled for September, saying in a statement that it would be “impossible” to hold the race “in the current circumstances.” The announcement came hours after European soccer’s governing body said it would move the Champions League final to Paris from St. Petersburg.
Reporting from Rome
Pope Francis visited the Russian ambassador to the Holy See on Friday morning “to express concern for the war,” according to the Vatican press office. Matteo Bruni, the Vatican spokesman, said that the pope spent more than a half-hour with the ambassador, Aleksandr Avdeyev.
Russia’s attack against Ukraine — one of the most significant military actions in Europe since World War II — raises the prospect of a rekindled Cold War between Russia and the West, with potentially devastating consequences for the security structure that has governed Europe since the Soviet Union’s collapse three decades ago.
Essentially, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia is seeking to redraw the post-Cold War boundaries of Europe, establishing a broad, Russian-dominated security zone and drawing Ukraine back into Moscow’s orbit.
Russia has demanded that NATO halt further eastward expansion and agree not to admit Ukraine as a member. The United States has rejected those demands, viewing the Russian paradigm of spheres of influence as an anachronistic and dangerous vestige of the past.
The incursion could further destabilize a volatile post-Soviet region that has been buffeted by unrest, including a revolt in Kazakhstan this year and an uprising in Belarus in 2020 that the country’s security forces brutally suppressed. In both cases, leaders under pressure turned to Russia, further cementing Moscow’s hold over their states.
For the United States, the Ukraine crisis is a test of its resolve as it seeks to restore confidence in America’s global leadership after its messy withdrawal from Afghanistan and the “America First” policies of President Donald J. Trump.
For NATO, which has sometimes struggled for relevancy in the post-Cold War era, the crisis has appeared to reinvigorate the alliance, with member states working mostly in concert to impose sanctions against Moscow, even though not all agree on how severe the measures should be.
SOCHI, Russia — Russia’s Defense Ministry said in a statement on Friday that its paratroopers had taken control of the territory around the former Chernobyl nuclear plant in northern Ukraine and were working with Ukrainian guards to ensure the safety of its facilities, contradicting Ukrainian claims that Russian forces were holding the plant’s personnel hostage.
“The radiation level around the nuclear plant is within limits,” Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov, the ministry’s spokesman, said in a statement. “The plant’s staff continues to service its facilities and monitor radioactivity.”
Ukraine’s government-run nuclear watchdog confirmed in a statement that Russian forces captured the area around the former plant, adding that all facilities “are under control and are being serviced by the plant’s staff.”
Earlier Ukrainian officials said that they “took its staff hostage.”
“This puts not only Ukrainian, but European security under threat,” said Alyona Shevtsova, a Ukrainian military official.
Chernobyl was the scene of the worst nuclear accident in history, when an explosion and fire in 1986 destroyed one of the plant’s reactors. The plant hasn’t produced electricity in more than two decades, and much of the equipment has been removed.
In Moscow, the Russian defense ministry said that “joint actions of Russian paratroopers and servicemen of the Ukrainian guards battalion will guarantee that nationalist formations and other terrorist organizations would not take advantage of the ongoing situation in the country to organize a nuclear provocation.”
In the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, Mikhailo Podolyak, a spokesman for the Ukrainian presidential office, contradicted that claim. He said the Ukrainian government had received information that Russian saboteurs “planned to conduct a terrorist act at the Chernobyl plant to cause a powerful environmental catastrophe.”
“It is clear that Russia not only wants to depose the government and replaced it with some puppet executors,” said Mr. Podolyak. “It wants to cause maximum destruction in Ukraine, even of environmental nature.”
The two countries also made opposing statements about the ongoing military action.
Since the start of the Russian incursion on Thursday, its forces had destroyed 118 military facilities in Ukraine, General Konashenkov said in a televised statement. Those facilities included 11 military airfields, 13 military headquarters and communication nodes, 13 surface-to-air missile systems and 36 radars. He also said Russian forces have downed five Ukrainian warplanes, one helicopter and five drones, as well as 18 tanks and other armored vehicles.
More than 150 Ukrainian servicemen gave up arms, the statement said.
In Kyiv, the spokesman for Ukraine’s presidential office denied any claims of the Ukrainian retreat, saying that the country’s soldiers “demonstrate fantastic heroism.”
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Continue reading the main storyA Ukrainian soldier sitting injured on Friday after crossing fire in Kyiv.
Reporting from Moscow
In his latest video address, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine switched to Russian to call on President Vladimir V. Putin to stop the war. “I want to turn again to the president of the Russian Federation,” Mr. Zelensky said. “Fighting is taking place across the entire territory of Ukraine. Let us sit down at the negotiating table in order to stop the dying.”
GENEVA — Fighting in Ukraine since Russia’s invasion began Thursday has caused at least 127 civilian casualties, including 25 deaths, the United Nations said on Friday, but it cautioned that the toll was probably much higher.
United Nations human rights monitors in Ukraine have faced difficulty corroborating casualty reports in the face of what Ravina Shamdasani, a spokeswoman for the United Nations human rights chief Michelle Bachelet, described as an information war and numerous false reports. Still, the casualty count is likely to be an underestimate, she told reporters.
“The figures, we fear, could be much higher than that,” Ms. Shamdasani said.
President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine put the number of deaths much higher, saying that 137 Ukrainians, military members and civilians, had been killed so far in the war.
MOSCOW — Russia on Friday rejected talks with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine and made it clear that it was seeking to topple his democratically elected government, which Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov said was steered by “neo-Nazis” and the West.
“We do not see the possibility of recognizing as democratic a government that persecutes and uses methods of genocide against its own people,” Mr. Lavrov said during a news conference in Moscow.
Moscow also vowed that the conflict would soon be over.
“Russia cannot allow Ukraine to become a dagger raised above us in the hands of Washington,” the head of Russia’s foreign intelligence agency, Sergei Naryshkin, said in a brief address aired on Russian state television. “The special military operation will restore peace in Ukraine within a short amount of time and prevent a potential larger conflict in Europe.”
Russian propaganda falsely claims that “neo-Nazis” controlling Ukraine’s government are perpetrating a genocide against Russian speakers in the country. President Vladimir V. Putin said Thursday that the purpose of Russia’s attack on Ukraine was to demilitarize and “denazify” Ukraine, and Mr. Lavrov repeated those terms on Friday, making it clear that Russia was seeking to install a new government in Kyiv.
“What we’re talking about is preventing Nazis and those who push methods of genocide to rule in this country,” Mr. Lavrov said. “Right now, the regime that is located in Kyiv is under two mechanisms of external control: first, the West, led by the United States, and secondly, neo-Nazis.”
Mr. Lavrov said Russia would be prepared to hold negotiations only when Ukraine stopped fighting.
“We are ready for talks at any moment, as soon as the Ukrainian Armed Forces answer the call of our president to stop their resistance and put down their arms,” Mr. Lavrov said.
He also claimed that Russia was not bombing civilian targets and that it was trying to limit casualties in the Ukrainian military.
“No strikes against civilian infrastructure are being carried out,” he said. “No strikes are being carried out on locations of Ukrainian army personnel in dormitories or other places not associated with military facilities.”
The United Nations said on Friday that the fighting in Ukraine since Russia’s invasion began had caused at least 127 civilian casualties, including 25 deaths, but it cautioned that the toll was probably much higher.
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Continue reading the main storyReporting from Lviv, Ukraine
Air raid sirens are sounding in Lviv, and I joined a group of local journalists in an underground pass in the city center. “Yes, I am scared,” said Vita Labych, 25, who works at a Lviv television station, NTA. “But this is a big fight for our whole history. It is our responsibility for our whole generation to destroy Russia.”
Reporting from Paris
The prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Karim Khan, expressed “increasing concern” at the events in Ukraine and said his office was committed to holding accountable any party responsible for war crimes.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is the biggest in Europe since World War II. With the full-scale assault entering its second day on Friday, Ukrainians are coming to terms with the reality that the unthinkable has actually happened. A new episode of “The Daily” podcast explores the significance of this moment and speaks to Ukrainians on the ground.
Listen to ‘The Daily’: Ukrainian’s Choice: Fight or Flee?
An exploration of the significance of Russia’s invasion and the decisions Ukrainians must now make.Charles Michel, the president of the European Council, wrote Friday on Twitter that he had spoken with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine and expressed his support for the Ukrainian people. “The senseless suffering and loss of civilian life must stop,” he tweeted. “Second wave of sanctions with massive and severe consequences politically agreed last night. Further package under urgent preparation.”
The senseless suffering and loss of civilian life must stop.
— Charles Michel (@eucopresident) February 25, 2022
Europe stands with #Ukraine’s people and will continue to provide support.
Second wave of sanctions with massive and severe consequences politically agreed last night.
Further package under urgent preparation.
Reporting from Moscow
Ukraine's foreign minister accused Russian forces of attacking a kindergarten and an orphanage, calling them "war crimes and violations of the Rome Statute," that establishes the International Criminal Court.
Reporting from Ukraine
We just arrived in Kharkiv, where a large rocket landed right in the middle of the street and failed to detonate near the National Guard academy. The long, silver rocket was sticking out of the asphalt as soldiers ran around throwing on body armor and cocking automatic weapons. It was unclear if anyone was injured, and we were told to leave the area immediately.
Reporting from Berlin
Former Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, who during her tenure favored strong ties with Russia, said on Friday that she fully supported economic sanctions against Moscow to end the “war of aggression by Russia and President Putin.”
“There is no justification whatsoever for this blatant breach of international law, and I condemn it in the strongest possible terms,” Ms. Merkel told the German wire service DPA, in her first public comments about the invasion of Ukraine.
LONDON — Britain’s defense secretary, Ben Wallace, said on Friday that the verified assessment of his country’s intelligence services was that Russian forces “hadn’t achieved their goals so far” and had failed to meet any of their objectives in the first day of their invasion of Ukraine.
Mr. Wallace, speaking to the BBC on Friday morning, said President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia had so far failed in an attempt to take a key airport north of Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital. Russian forces also lost approximately 450 troops and a significant number of tanks, and have so far not broken through the line of control in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, he said.
“Putin had in his mind and in his articles and speeches that somehow Ukrainians were waiting to be liberated by the great czar, and that he would turn up in Ukraine and they would all cheer him,” Mr. Wallace said. “Of course we all saw that’s not true.”
He added that while Ukrainians were bravely standing up for their values, Mr. Putin had also grossly miscalculated the support he would receive at home.
“It shows how out of touch with his own people he is,” Mr. Wallace said, pointing to antiwar protests in several Russian cities.
Mr. Wallace repeated that he had no intention of ordering British forces into a ground battle in Ukraine, despite what he called Russia’s “naked military aggression.”
“I said very clearly about a month ago that we are not going to be sending British troops to fight directly with Russian troops,” he said.
Instead, Mr. Wallace again emphasized the new sanctions imposed by Britain, which include a ban on Russia’s Aeroflot flights. Russia retaliated against those actions on Friday morning by banning British flights from its own airspace.
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