Russia launches a full-scale invasion of Ukraine

Russian ground forces have moved into Ukraine, as airstrikes and shellings target cities and bases.

People are trying to get away from the fighting, heading west, away from the Russian border. On Thursday a family from Odessa was trying to escape and they shared their harrowing story with Matt Ingram.

Mariya Stepanova was awoken by the sound of Russian missiles slamming into her country. Stepanova says she could see what was happening from her apartment window in Odessa. She along with her husband Egor and their four-year-old son Raphael are trying to escape the invasion, speaking with CHCH News from their car on their second attempt to drive to Ukraine’s western border. Stepanova says Thursday morning was impossible and “all the main roads, all the main cities were attacked.”

The family is one of many trying to head west as Russian forces conduct airstrikes and thousands of troops and tanks invade eastern Ukraine, from Russia, Belarus, and Crimea.

Russian President Vladimir Putin went on state tv in a pre-dawn address announcing what he calls a special military operation to demilitarize and de-nazify Ukraine, a country with a democratically elected government and a Jewish President.

Russia says separatist forces in the Ukrainian border regions of Donetsk and Luhansk asked for troops, and Putin tried to frame the invasion as an operation to protect ethnic Russians.

Gunfire and explosions could be heard throughout the morning in the capital Kyiv.

There is fierce fighting between Russian and Ukrainian forces in the Sumy and Kharkiv regions near the northeastern Russian border.

Russian forces control the abandoned Chernobyl nuclear plant prompting fears of an ecological disaster.

Stepanova says some of the heaviest fighting is just east of Odessa, in the area of Kherson where Russian forces now control a strategic water reservoir that supplies Crimea.

Stepanova tells her son they driving because they are playing a game, hiding from the bad guys. She is angry and scared and unsure what will come next. She says, “we’re going through some small cities here and I saw a Ukrainian flag and I started crying because we don’t want to go anywhere, it’s our country, we want to stay.” She and her family were forced to find a place to stay for the night, unable to get back to Odessa or out of the country before a curfew began barring people from the streets.

Calling the attack the greatest threat to European stability since the Second World War, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced new sanctions coordinated with other G7 countries targeting, 58 Russian entities and individuals.

The federal government says no more russian export permits will be issued and existing ones are cancelled. Trudeau says, “these sanctions are wide reaching, they will limit President Putin’s ability to continue funding this unjustified invasion.”

U.S. President Joe Biden hosted a virtual meeting of the G7 this morning before announcing new American sanctions targetting Russian banks and oligarchs, but not Putin himself.

International relations professor Aural Braun is critical of the way the U.S. President has slowly imposed increasingly severe sanctions and says the west didn’t give Ukraine enough defensive weapons. Saying, “they asked us to provide them with the weapons to defend themselves and we largely failed.”

In Russia not everyone supports the invasion, there have been protests against the war in Moscow and other Russian towns.

Ukrainian officials say dozens of Ukrainians have been killed and hundreds wounded.