Russia has launched large-scale military action to seize eastern Ukraine, said the country’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
“Now we can already see that Russian troops have started the battle for Donbass, for which they have been preparing for a long time,” he said in a video address. Zelenskyi said a “significant part of the entire Russian army is now concentrating on this offensive.”
He added: “No matter how many soldiers are driven there, we will defend ourselves. We will fight. We will not give up anything Ukrainian.”
The President’s comments follow a dramatic escalation in attacks by Russia ahead of the long-awaited operation. Vladimir Putin has declared his intention to conquer Donbass, the industrial heartland in the east of the country already partially controlled by pro-Russian separatists.
Zelenskyy made it clear that the Ukrainian army would fight any advance attempt by Moscow. “No matter how many Russian troops are driven there, we will fight,” he said. “We will defend ourselves. We will do it every day.”
Russia earlier Monday fired a barrage of long-range missiles over Ukraine in what analysts called a “softening exercise” ahead of its military push.
Shelling in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region also killed four people, regional governor Pavlo Kirilenko said.
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Ukrainian government officials warned Russian warplanes preparing to drop five-ton bombs on the Azovstal plant in the besieged city of Mariupol. For the past seven weeks, Ukrainian soldiers have been holding out in tunnels under the factory.
The underground complex is also used as a shelter by hundreds of civilians, including children. They are on the verge of being wiped out, officials said.
Earlier Monday, four Russian rockets fell in the western city of Lviv, killing seven people and injuring at least 11. Three hit military infrastructure. But the fourth seemed to have missed its target and ended up in a garage.
The city, which lies close to the Polish border, has become a haven for civilians fleeing fighting elsewhere. Lviv has also become a major gateway for NATO-supplied arms, to the increasing anger of the Kremlin.
Zelenskyj also submitted a completed questionnaire as the first step towards EU membership – a request that has been causing tensions with Moscow for years.
The Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement that missiles wiped out Ukrainian ammunition depots and other military targets.
It said it hit areas across the country, including the cities of Kharkiv and Zaporizhia, as well as the Donetsk and Dnipropetrovsk regions and the southern port of Mykolaiv.
According to residents, a powerful explosion shook Vasylkiv, a town south of Kyiv where a military airfield is located. More deadly shells were also fired in Kharkiv. In the past four days, 18 people have been killed and 106 injured.
A senior US defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the Pentagon’s assessments of the war, said there are now 76 Russian combat units, known as tactical battalion groups, in eastern and southern Ukraine, up from 65 last week .
That could equate to roughly 50,000 to 60,000 troops based on what the Pentagon said at the start of the war as a typical unit strength of 700 to 800 troops, but the numbers are difficult to pinpoint at this stage of the fighting.
The official also said four US cargo flights arrived in Europe on Sunday carrying an initial shipment of arms and other materiel destined for Ukraine as part of an $800million (£615million) package announced by Washington last week. And training of Ukrainian personnel on US 155mm howitzers is scheduled to begin in the next few days.
The capture of Mariupol, where Ukraine estimates 21,000 people were killed, is seen as key, and not just because it would deprive Ukraine of a vital port and complete a land bridge between Russia and the Crimean peninsula that Moscow opened eight years ago had conquered.
The US defense official said that if Russian forces were able to take full control of Mariupol, it could free up nearly a dozen tactical battalion groups for deployment elsewhere in the Donbass.