Russia wages war on Ukraine - 2nd March 2022

Russia's attempt to conquer its democratic neighbour Ukraine has commenced following an overwhelming build-up of troops and military hardware which encircled the country's northern, eastern and southern borders. With hundreds of innocent civilians already among the dead, many hundreds of thousands seeking refuge have fled westwards.

Left with little option, Ukraine's president declared martial law, obliging all men aged between 18 and 60 to take up arms and repel the invaders. Pavlo Starovoit is one such volunteer fighter.

Pavlo Starovoit: "The matter of fact, and, I stuck in this city, but I'm from Kyiv. And I want to do, to be helpful. And I want to do something to help my country to defend itself against Russian aggression."

Having currently ruled out putting forces on the ground to help Ukraine, the EU and NATO are bankrolling Ukraine's defence. The EU's taking the historic step of funding arms to defend a country, pledging 500 million dollars for Ukraine's arms purchases.

Beyond this, international restrictions on Russian assets and oligarchs have included freezing overseas accounts and removal from the SWIFT financial service which facilitates cross-border transactions. This severely hampers Russian banks' ability to move capital. Meanwhile, global businesses extracting themselves from Russian markets has set the ruble tumbling.

To counter disinformation, countries are interrupting Russian media broadcasts. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen also declared Russian flights barred from EU airspace.

Ursula von der Leyen: "We are shutting down the EU airspace for Russians. We're proposing a prohibition on all Russian-owned, Russian-registered, and Russian-controlled aircraft. These aircraft will no more be able to land in, take off, or overfly the territory of the European Union."

Waging an unwarranted war on a democracy has raised the ire of ordinary people across the planet, with protests even taking place in Russian cities, where citizens face consequences for voicing their opposition to Putin. Melisa joined the crowds protesting in St Petersburg.

Melisa: "To start the war was a very bad decision for our people because many of them have relatives, friends, husbands, and they will die for nothing."

In reply, Putin's signalled his willingness to deploy Russia's nuclear arsenal, crossing a new threshold, which garnered fierce criticism from the United States. Refusing to be cowed by these threats, Ukraine's foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, reiterated his country's resolve.

Dmytro Kuleba: "We will not surrender. We will not capitulate. We will not give up a single inch of our territory - this is not the goal of our fight."

Even in the heat of battle, the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy's statement, delivered in Russian, expressed a desire to reach forward for peace in a bid to end this unjust conflict.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy: "I will say frankly, as always - I do not really believe in the outcome of this meeting, but let them try. So that no citizen of Ukraine would have any doubt that I, as president, did not try to stop the war when there was a small chance."