“Our forces are already on the other side of the Donets… We continue to liberate our land, which I could not step on for eight years,” he said in an interview with Russian television Rossiya 24.

The Ukrainian military refuse to comply with orders and abandon their positions, the militias reported.
“According to our intelligence, servicemen of the Armed Forces of Ukraine along the contact line are massively refusing to carry out command orders and abandoning their forward positions,” reads the statement posted on the Telegram channel of the People’s Militia of Ukraine. the RPL.

Boris Johnson Speaks on Russia’ Agression on Ukraine

For their part, the militias of the Donetsk People’s Republic ( DPR ) stressed that the Ukrainian soldiers are preparing to withdraw from the town of Avdéevka, located in the north of the region.
In addition, they warned that during the withdrawal, the Ukrainian Army could commit “a military crime that could lead to a great humanitarian catastrophe and the death of the civilian population.”

Some Ukrainian army units are retreating without resistance, the Russian Defense Ministry said in a first comment on the development of the “special military operation” in Ukraine.

The entity’s spokesman, Igor Konashenkov, reiterated that the Russian Armed Forces are limited to disabling air defense facilities, airfields, military aircraft, and other targets of Ukraine’s military infrastructure with high-precision weapons.

“According to intelligence data, some troops and detachments of the Armed Forces of Ukraine are leaving their occupied positions en masse, leaving behind their weapons. Detachments that lay down their arms are not attacked,” Konashenkov told reporters.

The defense representative mentioned in particular that “the servicemen of the Border Service of Ukraine have not offered resistance to the Russian detachments.”

For their part, the Donetsk authorities reported a growing number of prisoners of war.
“The number of prisoners is increasing. They are transferred to places enabled by our prison services,” said the leader of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), Denis Pushilin.

In an interview with the Rossiya 1 TV channel, Pushilin stated that “all necessary help is provided to them by international standards and conventions.”

Lugansk militias cross the Donetsk River where the line of contact passes

Russian President Vladimir Putin, during a televised address on the morning of February 24, announced the launch of ” a special military operation ” on the territory of Ukraine, alleging that the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, already recognized by Russia as sovereigns, requested military aid under the recently signed treaties of friendship and reciprocal assistance, in the face of what they describe as aggression by Kyiv.

Putin stated that one of Russia’s goals is to achieve “the demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine.” He also threatened to put the perpetrators of “numerous bloody crimes against civilians” on trial.

The Russian president asked the uniformed civilians in Ukraine not to resist this operation and warned that Russia will immediately respond to any external force that threatens it or gets in its way.
For its part, the Russian Defense Ministry assured that the military attacks are not directed against Ukrainian cities or endanger the civilian population, but rather seek to disable the war infrastructure.
Hours after the start of the operation, the military entity reported that the military infrastructure of the airbases of the Armed Forces of Ukraine “is already unusable.”