Ukraine’s President Says He Is ‘Target No. 1’

Ukrainians on Friday braced for a violent battle for their capital, Kyiv, as officials warned residents to stay indoors and “prepare Molotov cocktails” to defend against advancing Russian forces who had entered a northern district of the city.

As missile strikes hammered Kyiv and a rocket crashed into a residential building, Moscow made clear that its goal is to topple the government of President Volodymyr Zelensky. He, in turn, urged Ukrainians in a televised address to defend the country, saying that no foreign troops were coming to their aid. Here is what else is happening in the Russian attack:

• Mr. Zelensky said that 137 Ukrainian soldiers and civilians had been killed in the Russian invasion that began on Thursday. The United Nations reported a lower tally of casualties but said that any figures were probably an undercount.

• Russian officials said that Moscow was seeking to topple Ukraine’s democratically elected government, and that they would negotiate with Kyiv only after its forces stopped fighting. They also vowed that the military operation would be “short.”

• Russia said its forces had seized the highly radioactive grounds surrounding the former Chernobyl nuclear plant and were working with Ukrainian guards to ensure its safety. That contradicted Ukrainian claims that Moscow’s troops were holding the plant’s personnel hostage.

• As the United States and Western governments imposed sanctions on Moscow, European soccer’s governing body moved the highly watched upcoming Championship League final to Paris, taking it away from the Russian city of St. Petersburg.

SOCHI, Russia — Russia’s Defense Ministry said in a statement on Friday that its paratroopers had taken control of the territory around the former Chernobyl nuclear plant in northern Ukraine and were working with Ukrainian guards to ensure the safety of its facilities, contradicting Ukrainian claims that Russian forces were holding the plant’s personnel hostage.

“The radiation level around the nuclear plant is within limits,” Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov, the ministry’s spokesman, said in a statement. “The plant’s staff continues to service its facilities and monitor radioactivity.”

Feb. 25, 2022, 6:48 a.m. ET

Feb. 25, 2022, 6:48 a.m. ET

A Ukrainian soldier sitting injured on Friday after crossing fire in Kyiv.

In his latest video address, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine switched to Russian to call on President Vladimir V. Putin to stop the war. “I want to turn again to the president of the Russian Federation,” Mr. Zelensky said. “Fighting is taking place across the entire territory of Ukraine. Let us sit down at the negotiating table in order to stop the dying.”

GENEVA — Fighting in Ukraine since Russia’s invasion began Thursday has caused at least 127 civilian casualties, including 25 deaths, the United Nations said on Friday, but it cautioned that the toll was probably much higher.

United Nations human rights monitors in Ukraine have faced difficulty corroborating casualty reports in the face of what Ravina Shamdasani, a spokeswoman for the United Nations human rights chief Michelle Bachelet, described as an information war and numerous false reports. Still, the casualty count is likely to be an underestimate, she told reporters.

MOSCOW — Russia on Friday rejected talks with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine and made it clear that it was seeking to topple his democratically elected government, which Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov said was steered by “neo-Nazis” and the West.

“We do not see the possibility of recognizing as democratic a government that persecutes and uses methods of genocide against its own people,” Mr. Lavrov said during a news conference in Moscow.

Air raid sirens are sounding in Lviv, and I joined a group of local journalists in an underground pass in the city center. “Yes, I am scared,” said Vita Labych, 25, who works at a Lviv television station, NTA. “But this is a big fight for our whole history. It is our responsibility for our whole generation to destroy Russia.”

The prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Karim Khan, expressed “increasing concern” at the events in Ukraine and said his office was committed to holding accountable any party responsible for war crimes.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is the biggest in Europe since World War II. With the full-scale assault entering its second day on Friday, Ukrainians are coming to terms with the reality that the unthinkable has actually happened. A new episode of “The Daily” podcast explores the significance of this moment and speaks to Ukrainians on the ground.

Charles Michel, the president of the European Council, wrote Friday on Twitter that he had spoken with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine and expressed his support for the Ukrainian people. “The senseless suffering and loss of civilian life must stop,” he tweeted. “Second wave of sanctions with massive and severe consequences politically agreed last night. Further package under urgent preparation.”

Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, dismissed Ukraine’s offer to negotiate. He said at a news conference in Moscow that President Volodymyr Zelensky was “lying” in saying he was ready to discuss a neutral status for Ukraine, Russian news agencies reported.

We just arrived in Kharkiv, where a large rocket landed right in the middle of the street and failed to detonate near the National Guard academy. The long, silver rocket was sticking out of the asphalt as soldiers ran around throwing on body armor and cocking automatic weapons. It was unclear if anyone was injured, and we were told to leave the area immediately.

Former Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, who during her tenure favored strong ties with Russia, said on Friday that she fully supported economic sanctions against Moscow to end the “war of aggression by Russia and President Putin.”

“There is no justification whatsoever for this blatant breach of international law, and I condemn it in the strongest possible terms,” Ms. Merkel told the German wire service DPA, in her first public comments about the invasion of Ukraine.

LONDON — Britain’s defense secretary, Ben Wallace, said on Friday that the verified assessment of his country’s intelligence services was that Russian forces “hadn’t achieved their goals so far” and had failed to meet any of their objectives in the first day of their invasion of Ukraine.

Mr. Wallace, speaking to the BBC on Friday morning, said President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia had so far failed in an attempt to take a key airport north of Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital. Russian forces also lost approximately 450 troops and a significant number of tanks, and have so far not broken through the line of control in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, he said.

NAIROBI, Kenya — African citizens remained stranded across Ukraine on Friday, even as their governments called for an immediate cease-fire, urging Russia to respect the territorial integrity of Ukraine and to withdraw its troops.

The rapidly escalating conflict is trapping thousands of African nationals in multiple cities, many of them medicine and science students at Ukrainian universities. As Russia began shelling Ukrainian towns and cities on Thursday, many of the students took to social media to share their fears and frustrations and plead for help from their governments.

In Lviv, Ukraine, about 1,000 volunteers enlisted the day the war started, and the numbers are growing. Conscription of fighting-age men will start with those with previous service records. Under martial law, no man aged 18 to 60 is allowed to leave the country.

A Ukrainian soldier who was going off to fight on Friday said he was not afraid to die. “The war has been going on for more than eight years, and how much more will be, no one knows,” he wrote in a message translated by the Telegram app as he showed me his smartphone in the Lviv train station. “But the Ukrainian people will remain free!”

Vietnam said it was “extremely concerned about the armed conflict in Ukraine.” Vietnam has very close ties to Russia, which is Hanoi’s top supplier of weapons.

The Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, was under bombardment on Friday morning, with missile strikes and a rocket crashing into a residential building as the second day of Russia’s military offensive pressed closer to the heart of the government.

Ukrainian forces were battling Russian troops on the outskirts of Kyiv, a city of 2.8 million people, where President Volodymyr Zelensky warned in a television address that he was “target No. 1” of the Russian advance.

European soccer’s governing body on Friday voted to move this season’s Champions League final, the showcase game on the continent’s sporting calendar, to Paris as punishment for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The game, on May 28, had been scheduled to be played in St. Petersburg, in a stadium built for 2018 World Cup and financed by the Russian energy giant Gazprom, a major sponsor of the governing body, UEFA. It will take place instead at the Stade de France, in the northern Paris suburb of Saint-Denis. It will be the first time France has hosted the final since 2006.

Russia’s Defense Ministry spokesman, Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov, said that since Thursday morning, Russian forces had destroyed 118 military facilities in Ukraine, including 11 military airfields and 13 surface-to-air missile systems. He added that Russia had downed five Ukrainian military planes, one helicopter and five drones, and that more than 150 Ukrainian service members had given up arms.

Russia announced its first response to Western sanctions: British planes will be banned from flying to Russia or crossing its airspace, which could affect flights from London to Asia. Britain this week banned the Russian national airline Aeroflot.

At the Lviv train station, Anton, a resident of Dnipro, said he had decided to move west after a rocket attack struck a military installation near where he lives. Asked the worst case for how things might go from here, he said, “Nuclear war.” Asked for the best-case scenario, he said, “Putin dies.”

Ukraine’s Defense Ministry, in a post on its official Facebook page, warned residents in a district in northern Kyiv of fighting with Russian forces nearby, telling them to stay home and prepare Molotov cocktails.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain spoke to President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine on Friday morning. He told him that “the world is united in its horror” at the Russian aggression, paid tribute to the “bravery and heroism of the Ukrainian people,” and “committed to provide further U.K. support to Ukraine,” Downing Street said in a statement.

South Korea, which exports semiconductors, automobiles and electronics to Russia, is bracing for any economic slowdown resulting from the international sanctions being placed against Russia. South Korea’s financial authorities said they are reserving up to 2 trillion won, or $1.7 billion, in emergency funds to support its companies. The Korean government has not specified what sanctions it will place upon Russia.

The Taliban on Friday issued its first response to the turmoil in Ukraine, calling on “both sides of the conflict to resolve the crisis through dialogue and peaceful means.” The statement, posted on Twitter by the group’s spokesman, Mohammad Naeem, also asked Ukraine and Russia to safeguard “the lives of Afghan students and migrants in Ukraine.” After the collapse of Afghanistan’s Western-backed government in August, the Ukrainian military evacuated nearly 100 Afghans to Kyiv.

Wang Wenbin, a spokesman for China’s Foreign Ministry, called on Friday for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all countries to be respected while also acknowledging Ukraine’s “complex” history and Russia’s “legitimate” security concerns. At a regular news briefing, he echoed almost word-for-word what Wang Yi, China’s foreign minister, told his Russian counterpart in a telephone call on Thursday.

Ukrainian defense officials said Friday morning that multiple missile strikes had hit Kyiv, but the targets and the damage inflicted remained unclear. “They say that civilian objects are not a target for them,” President Volodymyr Zelensky said of the Russian assault. “It is a lie, they do not distinguish in which areas to operate.”

LVIV, Ukraine — In Lviv on Friday, air-raid sirens sounded repeatedly, sending waves of anxiety through the city.

After a second alarm in the morning, the hotel staff at the Citadel Inn grew nervous. They said that there was a bomb shelter under the hotel, which started as an imposing and solid fort built in 1865 to look down over the city.

Myanmar’s military junta expressed support on Friday for Russia’s attack on Ukraine, even as a group of officials from Myanmar’s shadow civilian government took the opposite position.

“In the case of Russia and Ukraine, Russia has done its part to maintain its sovereignty, and I think it is the right thing to do,” the spokesman for the junta, Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Tun, told The New York Times by telephone. “Russia is also a big country among world powers and is showing that it also plays a main role in the balance sheet of maintaining world peace.”

A small contingent of Ukrainian border guards defending Snake Island, a remote outpost in the Black Sea, were among the 137 civilians and military personnel killed in Thursday’s attacks, according to Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky.

“All border guards died heroically but did not give up,” Mr. Zelensky said in a short video message posted just after midnight on Friday. He added that the guards would be posthumously awarded the title of “Hero of Ukraine.”

The Ukrainian ambassador to Japan, Sergiy Korsunsky, said in Tokyo on Friday that his country “would very much welcome if China will exercise its connection with Russia and talk to Putin and to explain to him, this is kind of inappropriate in the 21st century to do this massacre in Europe.” Mr. Korsunsky noted that China was Ukraine’s largest trading partner, with China buying $17 billion in coal, food and other products last year.

The actor and filmmaker Sean Penn is in Kyiv to make a documentary about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, according to a post released through the official Facebook account of Ukraine’s Office of the President. “Our country is grateful to him for such a show of courage and honesty,” the office said.

Mikhail Yurievich Galuzin, Russia’s ambassador to Japan, said there would be a “serious” response by Russia after Japan announced further sanctions earlier Friday, though he declined to specify any details. Japan’s sanctions, he said, were “counterproductive” and could potentially affect “our dialogue around a very very broad agenda” including any agreement on disputed islands that Russia calls the Southern Kuril Islands and Japan calls the Northern Territories.

Ukrainian defense officials said Friday morning that multiple missile strikes had hit Kyiv, but the targets and the damage inflicted remained unclear. “The first days are the most difficult, because right now the enemy will feel it has the advantage, or will be broken physically and morally,” Hanna Malyar, the deputy defense minister, said before calling on people to join a general mobilization. “It is important that everyone is strong in spirit. This is our land. We will not hand it over.”

Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, accused Russia of targeting civilian areas with rocket attacks on Friday morning, including in the capital, Kyiv. “They say that civilian objects are not a target for them,” he said in a televised address. “It is a lie, they do not distinguish in which areas to operate.”

Zelensky said that “in most directions the enemy was stopped, the fighting continues. The purpose of this attack is pressure, not only on the government, but on all Ukrainians.”

NEW DELHI — India has so far resisted entreaties from the United States and Ukraine to join the international condemnation of Russia, its most important source of military supplies.

As U.S. foreign policy has shifted its focus toward Asia, ties with India have deepened, particularly through the four-country coalition known as the Quad, which also includes Japan and Australia. Yet the Quad has not yet proven to be a bulwark against incursions by Chinese soldiers on India’s eastern border.

For a second time this morning, sirens have wailed in Lviv, and people are growing increasingly anxious. A father ran back to his room to get blankets for his daughter. A woman carried a small dog. They went outside first and talked nervously, then decided to go into the basement of the fort, hoping that walls that have stood for over 150 years would protect them from Russian bombs.

When a second air raid alarm in Lviv sounded this morning, the hotel staff at the Citadel Inn grew nervous. They said that there was a bomb shelter under the hotel, which started as an imposing and solid fort built in 1865 to look down on the city.

Air-raid sirens wailing in Lviv.

Three Ukrainian border guards were killed by a Russian rocket strike early on Friday, according to the State Border Guard service. The strike, which took place around 4:25 a.m., hit a border post in the Zaporizhia region in southeastern Ukraine.

As the skies above Kyiv were lit up by a huge explosion and at least one rocket crashed into a civilian building, Ukrainian officials braced for attacks.  “Horrific Russian rocket strikes on Kyiv,” the foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, wrote on Twitter. The last time the capital “experienced anything like this,” he wrote, was in 1941 “when it was attacked by Nazi Germany. Ukraine defeated that evil and will defeat this one. Stop Putin.”

A civilian building was struck in a residential neighborhood, according to Ukrainian officials.

Vitali Klitschko, the mayor of Kyiv, said on Twitter that according to preliminary reports, three people were injured, one of them critically, after a rocket fragment hit a residential building. He said emergency workers were on the scene and that the house was on fire and at risk of collapsing.

Taiwan’s foreign ministry said on Friday that the self-governed island would join the international community in imposing economic penalties on Russia, though it did not specify details.

Videos verified by The Times showed a large explosion in the sky over the outskirts of southern Kyiv early on Friday morning. Witnesses filmed fiery debris falling over parts of the city. The videos appeared to show at least two surface-to-air missiles being fired near Kyiv before the explosion.

Most Asian stock markets posted gains on Friday morning, while Brent crude oil, the international benchmark, climbed 2.5 percent to $101.57 a barrel. Japan’s Nikkei 225 rose 1.5 percent, and the Shanghai Composite advanced 0.8 percent. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index fell 0.4 percent. Overnight on Wall Street, stocks rebounded from a selloff to close higher on Thursday.

Vitali Klitschko, the mayor of Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, said that President Vladimir V. Putin had “lost reality” and that he was prepared to take up arms to defend against Russia’s invasion. “I don’t have another choice — I have to do that,” he told a reporter from Good Morning Britain. Mr. Klitschko, 50, and his brother Wladimir Klitschko are former heavyweight champions.

China’s embassy in Ukraine is arranging charter flights for Chinese nationals who are looking to evacuate. There are around 6,000 Chinese citizens in Ukraine. The announcement came after a Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman declined to call Russia’s attack on Ukraine an “invasion.”

Singapore said it was “gravely concerned” about Russia’s announcement of the start of the “special military operation” in the Donbas region and of reports of land and air attacks on Ukraine. “Singapore strongly condemns any unprovoked invasion of a sovereign country under any pretext,” the foreign ministry said in a statement. “We reiterate that the sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of Ukraine must be respected.”

European Union leaders meeting into the early hours of Friday said they had approved a new, significant package of sanctions against Russia. It will include bans on large bank deposits in the European Union, visa limitations for diplomatic and other privileged passport holders, and halts in exports to Russia of numerous technological goods including semiconductors.

Australia announced further sanctions against Russia on Friday morning and said it was working with NATO to provide “non-lethal military equipment and medical supplies” to Ukraine. Prime Minister Scott Morrison said Australia will extend its sanctions to Belarus, targeting “key Belarusian individuals and entities.” Australia will also impose sanctions on an additional 300 Russian parliamentarians who voted in favor of the invasion, he said.

Japan plans to limit semiconductor exports to Russia as part of another set of sanctions, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said on Friday morning. It will also freeze the assets of some people and groups linked to Russia, and stop issuing visas to certain Russian individuals.

SLOVYANSK, Ukraine — The Russian military plunged into Ukraine by land, sea and air on Thursday, killing more than 100 Ukrainian soldiers and civilians, and ominously touching off a pitched battle at the highly radioactive area around the Chernobyl nuclear reactor that melted down in 1986.

Day 1 of the first major land war in Europe in decades began before sunrise with the terrifying thud of artillery strikes on airports and military installations all over Ukraine. A senior Pentagon official said that three lines of Russian troops and military forces were moving swiftly toward Ukrainian cities — one heading south from Belarus toward Kyiv, the capital; another toward Kharkiv, in northeast Ukraine; and a third toward Kherson in the south, near Crimea. The forces were using missiles and long-range artillery, the official said.