Defiant Zelensky emerges at dawn in Kyiv after Putin’s forces stormed the capital

A high-rise apartment block in Kyiv was hit by a devastating missile this morning as fighting continues to rage in the capital between Russian attackers and Ukrainian forces.

Emergency services said the number of victims from the attack in the Zhuliany district was ‘being specified’ and that an evacuation was underway. Images show the tower block with a hole covering at least five floors blasted into the side and rubble strewn across the street below.

It comes as a barrage of cruise missiles have also been launched by Russian forces against Ukrainian military facilities. 

Defence Ministry spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov said the military struck a range of installations with long-range Kalibr cruise missiles.

He said that since the start of Russia’s attack on Thursday, the military has hit 821 Ukrainian military facilities, including 14 air bases and 19 command facilities, and destroyed 24 air defence missile systems, 48 radars, seven warplanes, seven helicopters, nine drones, 87 tanks and eight military vessels.

Maj Gen Konashenkov claimed the Russian military has taken full control of the southern city of Melitopol, about 35 kilometres inland from the Azov Sea coast, and said Russia-backed separatists have made significant gains in the eastern region of Donbas.

Meanwhile, the mayor of a city south of the capital says the country’s military has fended off a Russian attempt to take control of a military air base.

Natalia Balansynovych, mayor of Vasylkiv, about 25 miles south of Kyiv, said Russian airborne forces landed near the city overnight and tried to seize the base. She added that fierce fighting also raged in Vasylkiv’s central street.

She said Ukrainian forces repelled the Russian attacks, and the situation is now calm. Ms Balansynovych said there were heavy casualties, but did not give any numbers.

It comes as Ukraine’s president emerged on Saturday morning defiant and determined after an onslaught on his capital city, declaring that Kyiv would resist the Russian advance and vowing to fight Vladimir Putin’s forces.

Volodymyr Zelensky captioned the video, posted on Twitter, ‘Don’t believe the fakes’.

He condemned the false claims that he had surrendered and told his compatriots to lay down arms, and insisted his country would not give in to Russian aggression.

‘Recently, fake info was spread about me ordering our army to lay down arms and evacuate,’ Zelensky said.

‘It’s untrue. I’m here, we are not laying down, we will protect our state. This is our land, our country, our kids, and we will defend them.’

The 44-year-old, who has been widely praised for his courage in the face of Russia’s aggression, said on Thursday that he knew he was ‘target number one’ for Putin’s assassins. 

‘There’s a lot of fake information online that I call on our army to lay down arms, and that there’s been an evacuation ordered,’ he said.

‘I’m here. We won’t lay down our arms. We will defend our state.’

Yet even as Zelensky spoke, the Ukrainian interior ministry was warning Kyiv’s residents to shelter in place and not venture out onto the streets.

Ukraine’s armed forces on Saturday morning claimed 3,500 Russians had been killed overnight, and 200 taken prisoner.

They said 14 Russian aircraft, eight helicopters, and 102 tanks had been seized. The scale of Ukrainian losses was not clear.   

Armed forces were engaged in a fierce battle for control of the city, with footage on social media showing explosions close to a metro station in the western center of the capital by the zoo; a battle ongoing for control of a thermal power plant to the north; and multiple reports suggesting fierce fighting 20 miles south, near a vital airbase.

In Kyiv, footage shared on social media showed a bombardment close to Beresteiska metro station, in the west of the city, which is near the zoo.  

More than 50 explosions and heavy machine gun fire were reported in the district of Shulyavka, near Beresteiska metro and the zoo, according to The Kyiv Independent. 

A bridge near the metro was blown up, according to reports. It was unclear whether the explosion was caused by artillery or by Ukrainian forces intent on stopping the Russian advance.

The district is under the control of the 101st Independent Security Brigade of the General Staff.

Terrified residents posted videos filmed from their apartments, with flashes of light and the sound of gunfire. One video shared on social media showed an apartment building glowing with red lights, which some speculated was to guide bombers or snipers. Others said the lights were to warn the military not to bomb them. 

The northern suburb of Troieshchyna was also coming under sustained attack for another night, as Russia tried to wrest control of the thermal power plant on the banks of the Dnieper river. Unconfirmed reports suggested dozens of Russians had been arrested.

Meanwhile, satellite images show a huge queue of trucks and cars waiting in a traffic jam leaving Ukraine, near the Romanian border in Siret.

By 5:30am in Kyiv (10:30pm Eastern), Ukraine’s armed forces were claiming that the advance from the west had been repelled. 

But a CNN crew in Kyiv reported the sounds of heavy gunfire and what appeared to be anti-aircraft fire. 

Ukraine’s government said earlier on Friday night that they had shot down two Russian military transport planes carrying paratroopers on the outskirts of Kyiv. 

The first IL-76 came down near Vasylkiv, 20 miles south of Kyiv, the Ukrainian military said. 

The second IL-76 was shot down near Bila Tserkva, 50 miles south of the capital, Nexta reported. 

The fate of those onboard was unclear. The aircrafts – medium-range military transport aircraft, which first went into service in 1974 – can hold 150-225 fully-equipped soldiers, and is used to drop paratroopers into combat and resupply arms. 

The town of Vasylkiv appeared, at 3am local time (8pm Eastern), to be a focus of heavy fighting to the south.

Nexta, a local media network, reported that Russians ‘dressed in uniform of the Ukrainian national police’ attacked a checkpoint near Vasylkiv, shooting at Ukrainian soldiers.

‘Immediately after that a group of Russian military in a truck came in. There is a heavy fight going on,’ the site reported. 

New satellite images showed the build up of troops to the north, in Belarus. 

The photos showed approximately 150 transport helicopters and ground troops 20 miles from the Belarusian-Ukrainian border, in southern Belarus.  

Not long after the first troop carrier was shot down, Ukraine’s State Agency for Special Communications said that Ukraine’s air defense had downed a Russian close-support aircraft and a helicopter in Donbas. 

A S-300 surface-to-air missile system destroyed a Russian Sukhoi Su-25 jet and an unspecified helicopter at midnight, they said.

The Russian Air Force currently operates around 250 Su-25s of all variants, and they are considered a staple of Russian ground-attack regiments.  

Opposition was growing in Russia to the carnage in Ukraine.

Communist MP Mikhail Matveev said: ‘I think that the war should be stopped immediately.

‘When I voted for the recognition of the DPR / LPR, I voted for peace, not for war.

‘For Russia to become a shield, so that the Donbas was not bombed, but not for Kyiv to be bombed.’ 

The onslaught came shortly after Ukraine’s president warned that the Russians intend to take Kyiv overnight, urging his countrymen to resist the expected onslaught as Western officials say the city appears surrounded. 

Zelensky, addressing the nation from a secret location in the capital, had a dire warning for his embattled and defiant people on Friday night.

‘Russia will try to break our resistance with all its might,’ he said, in a video posted to social media. 

‘Tonight the enemy will begin storming us. We need to withstand them!’ 

The United States has offered to evacuate Zelensky and his family, but the president is refusing to leave. On Thursday evening he told the country he was aware that he was ‘target number one’ for Russian assassins, but he and his family would not leave.

Zelensky said that Chernihiv, Symy, Kharkiv, Donbas, and the south could also come under attack.

‘This night will be difficult, very difficult. But the morning will come,’ he said, according to The Kyiv Independent.

The 44-year-old referenced the Russian shelling of a kindergarten in Ukraine that killed at least one child and injured more, saying: ‘What kind of war is that? Were these children neo-Nazi? Or were they NATO soldiers?’ 

Vitali Klitschko, the former world champion heavyweight boxer who is now the mayor of Kyiv, said his city faces a ‘difficult night’. 

The British Ministry of Defence said they believe Kyiv, home to 1.4 million people, is close to being encircled as the Russians advance from all sides. 

Kyiv’s streets were empty on Friday night as people sought shelter in the city’s subway system. Many had fled, with buses and trains out of the city packed with people desperate to escape, and long lines of traffic choking the roads.  

In Cherkasy, home to 270,000 people 120 miles south of Kyiv, video on social media showed people in a basement on Friday night, resolutely singing the national anthem as they awaited the onslaught. 

In New York, on Friday night, a United Nations resolution that called on Moscow to halt its attack on Ukraine and withdraw its troops was vetoed by Russia – a permanent member of the Security Council. China, India and the UAE abstained.

Vladimir Putin, meanwhile, urged Ukraine’s troops on Friday to overthrow their own government and begin to negotiate with the Kremlin. 

‘It looks like it will be easier for us to come to terms with you than with this gang of drug addicts and neo-Nazis,’ he said. 

There was little sign that Ukrainian generals were tempted, and Russia appears to have been somewhat taken aback at the scale of Ukrainian resistance and their ability to defend their country.

There was no doubt, however, that Russia’s overwhelming military superiority would soon come into effect.

With 900,000 troops, Russia has the fourth largest military in the world, and more than a decade of reforms and procurement has made it a dangerous opponent.

Ukraine has just 361,000 troops, although Zelensky on Thursday ordered a full mobilization of troops and banned men aged 18-60 from leaving the country, in readiness for a whole-nation effort. 

Ukraine’s highly-motivated infantry have modern weapons and protective gear, including N-LAW and Javelin anti-tank missiles provided by Britain and the US. 

With the Russian advance slower than expected, there were fears on Friday night that Putin could resort to high-power thermobaric weapons – dubbed the ‘father of all bombs’ – as brave Ukrainians resist his attempts to take control of Kyiv.

There are also concerns that units that are running behind schedule as they encounter stiff opposition could resort to indiscriminate shelling as a terror weapon.

Thermobaric weapons – also known as vacuum bombs – are high-powered explosive that use the atmosphere itself as part of the explosion. They are among the most powerful non-nuclear weapons ever developed.  

A thermobaric bomb dropped by the U.S. on Taliban in Afghanistan in 2017 weighed 21,600 pounds and left a crater more than 1,000 feet wide after it exploded six feet above the ground.

Thermobaric weapons were developed by both the U.S. and the Soviet Union in the 1960s. In September 2007, Russia detonated the largest thermobaric weapon ever made, which created an explosion equivalent to 39.9 tons.

The U.S. version of the weapon reportedly costs over $16 million each.

‘My fear would be that if they don’t meet their timescale and objectives they would be indiscriminate in their use of violence,’ a Western official said. 

‘They don’t adhere to the same principles of necessity and proportionality and rule of law that Western forces do.’

The bomb works by using oxygen from the surrounding air to generate a high-temperature explosion, making it far deadlier than a conventional weapon.

While Russian special forces have reached the suburbs of Kyiv, the bulk of Russia’s heavy armor is believed to be still more than 30 miles away from the capital. 

A senior U.S. defense official said Friday that Russia appears to have lost some of its momentum due to the Ukrainian’s fiery resistance.

‘We do assess that there is greater resistance by the Ukrainians than the Russians expected,’ the official said, adding Ukraine’s command and control of its military ‘remains intact.’

‘They are not moving on Kyiv as fast as what we believe they anticipated they would be able to do. That said, they continue to try to move on Kyiv.’ 

Putin has only mobilized about one-third of the 190,000 troops he has stationed at the Ukraine border, the official said.

Astonishing footage from Kyiv on Friday showed a Russian tank swerving towards a car and then driving over it twice – and the elderly driver then being pulled, alive, from the flattened vehicle.   

The driver of the tank could then be seen reversing back over the car further crushing it.

‘I saw an armored vehicle and there was automatic fire,’ said Kyiv resident Viktor Berbash, 58. 

‘And here this car, with probably an anti-aircraft gun on it, was already here. 

‘It was not by chance, it was for fun, there was no need for this,’ Berbash said. 

‘And it just ran into this car. Stopped, reversed over it again and drove on.’

The collision occurred in Kyiv’s Obolon district on Friday.  

The tank was believed to be a Strela-10 — an anti-aircraft vehicle used by both the Russian and Ukrainian armies.