Russian troops have entered Ukraine’s second-largest city of Kharkiv and fighting is under way in the streets, Ukrainian authorities have said.
Oleh Sinehubov, head of the Kharkiv regional administration, said Ukrainian forces are fighting Russian troops in the city and asked civilians not to leave their homes.
Russian troops approached Kharkiv, which is located about 20 kilometres south of the border with Russia, shortly after Moscow launched its invasion of Ukraine on Thursday.
But until Sunday, they had remained on its outskirts without trying to enter the city, while other forces rolled past, pressing their offensive deeper into Ukraine.
Videos posted on Ukrainian media and social networks showed Russian vehicles moving across Kharkiv and a light vehicle burning in the street.
Earlier, Russia unleashed a wave of attacks targeting Ukrainian airfields and fuel facilities.
Huge explosions lit up the sky early on Sunday south of the capital, Kyiv, where people hunkered down in homes, underground garages and subway stations in anticipation of a full-scale assault by Russian forces.
Flames billowed into the sky before dawn from an oil depot near an air base in Vasylkiv, where there has been intense fighting, according to the town’s mayor.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s office said there was another explosion at the civilian Zhuliany airport.
Mr Zelenskiy’s office also said Russian forces blew up a gas pipeline in Kharkiv, prompting the government to warn people to protect themselves from the smoke by covering their windows with damp cloth or gauze.
“We will fight for as long as needed to liberate our country,” the president vowed.
Terrified men, women and children sought safety inside and underground, and the government maintained a 39-hour curfew to keep people off the streets.
More than 150,000 Ukrainians fled for Poland, Moldova and other neighbouring countries, and the United Nations warned the number could grow to four million if fighting escalates.
Russian president Vladimir Putin has not disclosed his ultimate plans, but Western officials believe he is determined to overthrow Ukraine’s government and replace it with a regime of his own, redrawing the map of Europe and reviving Moscow’s Cold War-era influence.
Swift system
Meanwhile, a fresh round of sanctions on Russia to bar some banks from the Swift system have been vowed in a joint declaration by the European Commission, France, Germany, Italy, United Kingdom, Canada and United States.
The group also said they would prevent the Russian Central Bank using its reserves to undermine the effect of existing sanctions, which have been announced in waves by international governments since the invasion of Ukraine this week.
It followed mounting public pressure to do more to assist Ukraine and push back against Russia, on a day when thousands of people demonstrated against the invasion in cities across Europe.
“We stand with the Ukrainian government and the Ukrainian people in their heroic efforts to resist Russia’s invasion,” read the surprise joint declaration, released just before midnight in Brussels. “We will hold Russia to account and collectively ensure that this war is a strategic failure for Putin.”
In the statement, the group vowed to set up a “transatlantic taskforce” to hunt down the assets of sanctioned individuals and freeze them.
It also committed to take new measures “on additional Russian officials and elites close to the Russian government, as well as their families, and their enablers to identify and freeze the assets they hold in our jurisdictions”.
They declared they would work together to counter hybrid war tactics from Russia, including disinformation.
In a statement, European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen accused the Russian army of “barbaric actions”.
“The European Union and its partners are working to cripple Putin’s ability to finance his war machine,” Ms von der Leyen said.
“We will stop Putin from using his war chest. We will paralyse the assets of Russia’s central bank. This will freeze its transactions. And it will make it impossible for the central bank to liquidate its assets.” – Additional reporting from AP