Ukraine Death Toll Hits 57

Fifty seven Ukrainians have been killed and 169 wounded so far, Kiev’s health minister has said, after Russia launched a full scale invasion of Ukraine by land, sea and air.

As night fell for the first time since Vladimir Putin initiated the all-out assault, heavy exchanges of fire were taking place the regions of Sumy and Kharkiv in the northeast, and Kherson and Odessa in the south, while Kiev said heavy Russian shelling was still underway in the eastern Donetsk region.

Moscow’s defence ministry claimed to have “neutralised” Ukraine’s air defences and destroyed 11 airfields, with Russian troops also seizing an airbase just 25 miles from the capital’s centre and the infamous Chernobyl nuclear plant.

Addressing the nation in military uniform, Ukraine’s president Volydmyr Zelensky suggested the “missile blasts, fighting and the rumble of aircraft” in his country were “the sound of a new iron curtain, which has come down and is closing Russia off from the civilised world”.

“Our national task is to make sure this curtain does not fall across our land.”

More to follow…