KYIV, Ukraine—Russian armored columns pushed into Ukraine, airstrikes hit dozens of cities and airborne troops landed at a armed service airfield on the outskirts of the capital on Thursday following President Vladimir Putin ordered an offensive that he mentioned was aimed at toppling the authorities in Kyiv, drawing condemnation and new sanctions from the U.S. and its allies.
“They are killing people today and reworking peaceful metropolitan areas into armed forces targets,” Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, reported in a television handle in Kyiv immediately after midnight. “That’s villainous and will under no circumstances be forgiven.”
