By Joshua Zitser, Sophia Ankel, Bill Bostock and Bethany Dawson
Smoke
and flame rose near a military building after an apparent Russian strike in
Kyiv on February 24. Efrem Lukatsky/AP Photo
Russian forces invaded Ukraine by land, air, and sea on
Thursday morning, in what NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg condemned as
a "brutal act of war."
People across Ukraine were jolted from their sleep by the
sounds of sirens and explosions as Russian airstrikes hit the country's capital
and several other cities.
Several eyewitnesses told Insider this was their first
realization that a full-scale invasion was underway.
In Kyiv, Ukraine's capital city, the airstrikes started
before dawn, and across the capital city of three million people, the sound of
explosions, gunfire, and sirens was heard, Reuters reported.
"I woke up at five in the morning to the sounds of
the blasts," said Ivanna Klympush, an MP with the European Solidarity
party, speaking to Insider from her home in Kyiv. "We all did."
Bryan Stern from Project Dynamo, a group helping evacuate
American citizens out of Ukraine, told Insider that his "entire room
shook" when a missile landed near his hotel room in downtown Kyiv.
"It was pretty intense," he said.
Witnesses have also reported missile blasts in several
other cities, including Kramatorsk, Dnipro, and Odessa, per reports.
Just minutes after President Vladimir Putin announced a
military operation on Thursday morning, per The New York Times, explosions were
visible in Ukraine's second-largest city, Kharkiv.
Makama Ezekial, a South African living in Kharkiv, told
Insider the "crashing sounds" of missiles exploding made him jump out
of bed. Ezekial immediately went to find his children, he said, because he
became afraid for their safety.
His children were fine. But, according to Reuters, a boy
was killed in Kharkiv after shelling struck an apartment complex, emergency
services said.
In Odessa, a picturesque tourist hub in the southwest of
Ukraine, a local journalist told Insider that he heard "roughly 20
rockets" explode near his home on Thursday morning.
"Then we saw the smoke from the balcony," said
Ugo Poletti, the editor-in-chief of the Odessa Journal.
Regional authorities of Ukraine's southern Odessa region
said 18 people were killed in a missile attack, Reuters reported.
But despite the "scary scenario," Poletti said
the citizens of Odessa appeared to be "quite calm."
Yosri Lahouar, a Tunisian living in Ukraine, was also
struck by the calmness of the locals in Odessa.
A missile landed about 10 meters away from Lahouar's
apartment, he told Insider. He immediately grabbed his backpack and ran out on
the streets to find shelter, as smoke engulfed him, Lahouar said.
Then, 10 minutes later, he continued, there was another
explosion nearby. "I was on the ground and I started to cry," he
said.
But, Lahouar explained, his reaction stood out from the
crowd. "When I looked around, everyone was walking around normally, like
nothing had happened," he said. "I was surprised."
The explosions, Lahouar said, were a moment of clarity
for him. "At first, I was one of the voices who thought that war would
never happen," he told Insider. But as of this morning, he said, he had to
come to terms with the fact that he's living in a "war zone."
