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View of the Ukrainian capital Kiev on Friday night
Photo: Pierre Crom/Getty Images
According to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, he is organizing resistance against the attack by Russian troops from Kiev.
"I'm staying in the capital, staying with my people," he said in a video message on Friday night.
The 44-year-old head of state was filmed at an unidentifiable location.
Residents of Kiev reported explosion noises at night: Two loud detonations could be heard in the center of the city.
Ukrainian Deputy Interior Minister Anton Gerakhchenko wrote on his Telegram account: »The attacks on Kiev with cruise missiles and ballistic missiles have started again.
I heard two powerful explosions.' Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba tweeted: 'Terrible Russian rocket attacks on Kiev.' Poland-based Nexta news channel reported that at least six explosions shook the city.
According to information from the agency Unian, among other things, a multi-storey apartment building on the east bank of the Dnipro River was hit, in which a fire broke out.
The city administration announced on Telegram that debris from a rocket had hit there.
Three people were injured.
An adviser to the Ukrainian interior minister wrote that Ukrainian forces there had succeeded in shooting down a Russian "flying machine".
More details are not yet known.
Mayor Vitali Klitschko published a video on Telegram that showed fires on several floors of the building.
Firefighters were on site.
One of the injured is in critical condition, Klitschko wrote on Twitter.
Zelenskyi reports the death of 137 "heroes"
The Russian attacks from several directions began on Thursday morning.
“Today Russia attacked the entire territory of Ukraine.
And today our defenders did a lot,” said Zelenskyy.
According to him, 137 soldiers were killed on the first day of the Russian invasion.
He called them heroes.
In addition, 316 soldiers were injured, said Zelenskyj.
There is hardly any information about civilian casualties.
In the Kharkiv region on the eastern border, 23 people were killed and hundreds injured, said the head of administration Oleg Sinegubow, according to the Unian agency.
Zelenskjy surmised that the Russian attack was meant to overthrow him.
"According to our information, the enemy has made me Target #1, my family Target #2," he said.
He complained that none of his international interlocutors had supported Ukraine's admission to NATO.
So Ukraine is on its own.
The US government also said that Zelenskyy was a "main target for Russian aggression".
He embodies "in many ways the democratic aspirations and aspirations of Ukraine and the Ukrainian people," US State Department spokesman Ned Price told CNN.
G
eneral mobilization in Ukraine - men between 18 and 60 are not allowed to leave the country
The Ukrainian President ordered a general mobilization late Thursday evening, which is to apply for 90 days and provides for the call-up of conscripts and reservists.
Even before that he had ordered a partial mobilization of reservists.
"We have to operationally replenish the army and other military formations," he justified his decision.
There will also be military exercises in the territorial units.
The 44-year-old did not say how many men will be affected.
According to Ukrainian authorities, male citizens between the ages of 18 and 60 are not allowed to leave the country.
They will not be allowed across the border, said the head of the Ukrainian customs authority in Lviv, Danil Menshikov.
He asked people not to panic and not try to cross the border on their own.
There was no reliable information on the military situation.
The enemy is concentrating its troops in the Kharkiv and Donetsk regions in the east and south, said a spokesman for the Ukrainian General Staff.
The main goal seems to be to blockade Kiev.
At night, Russian columns advanced on the capital.
They circled the small town of Konotop about 200 kilometers away, according to the local administration.
According to the city administration, 17 high-rise buildings were damaged by shelling in the strategically important Ukrainian port of Mariupol on the Azov Sea.
The power supply had partially failed, but the water supply worked.
23 injured residents of the city and 23 injured soldiers were admitted to clinics.
aar/dpa/AFP