00:00This is Breaking News from Channel 7 Eyewitness News.
00:05The breaking and horrible news unfolding right now in Eastern Europe.
00:09The Russian invasion of Ukraine now underway.
00:12What very likely could be the beginning of a devastating war playing out on the European continent.
00:18Much of the operation happening in Eastern Ukraine in the Donbass region,
00:21but sounds of explosions also being heard right now in the capital city of Kiev.
00:30Iowa News News reporter Josh Einiger live at the U.N. with the Security Council has been meeting in an emergency session.
00:42Josh?
00:44And that session just wrapped up about an hour ago, Sade.
00:47It was a remarkable split-screen moment, though, tonight as the U.N. Secretary General addressed the Security Council
00:54and specifically straight into the camera, the president of Russia, Vladimir Putin.
01:00If indeed an operation is being prepared, I have only one thing to say from the bottom of my heart.
01:11President Putin, stop your troops from attacking the Ukraine.
01:18Give peace a chance.
01:21Too many people have already died.
01:23Yeah, but those words were lost on Putin because at the precise moment those words were being spoken here
01:32in the Secretary, in the Security Council, in the U.N. building behind me,
01:36a prerecorded message was released by the Kremlin in which Putin essentially declared war on Ukraine.
01:44And so one country has now invaded another in the Europe, on the European continent for the first time since World War II.
01:55Tonight, Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy made an impassioned plea in Russian to the Russian people.
02:02Ukrainians want peace, he said, and recounted an attempt to contact Russian President Vladimir Putin today.
02:08The response, Zelenskyy recounted, silence.
02:16Putin remains defiant and seemingly on track to invade.
02:20He's amassed more than 150,000 troops along Ukraine's borders, facing down 250,000 Ukrainian forces
02:28in what the U.S. believes would be a violent and protracted war.
02:32Everything we've seen over the last 24 to 48 hours has Russia putting the final touches on having its forces in place
02:38across all of Ukraine's borders, to the north, to the east, to the south, to be ready for a full-on invasion.
02:48Smaller skirmishes are already in full swing.
02:51Ukraine blamed this bomb attack on Russian-backed separatists in the east.
02:55But they, with no evidence, claim it's Ukraine that's the aggressor, and are asking Putin for help,
03:00something he already said he'd do when he signed a declaration unilaterally declaring those areas independent,
03:07along with an expanded land grab 70 percent larger than the areas those separatists already hold.
03:13The U.S. says all of it is staged, a pretext for war.
03:18This is exactly that. This is right out of the Russian playbook, to manufacture a provocation as a justification for invading Ukraine.
03:28And this is part and parcel of what we predicted all along.
03:30And now they fear the die has been cast, that Putin, who's long lamented the breakup of the Soviet Union,
03:36hungers for a return of the Cold War glory days, no matter the cost.
03:41It won't be bloodless. There will be suffering. There will be sacrifice.
03:48And in some twisted irony here at the U.N. tonight, the Security Council meeting where all those diplomats were imploring Russia not to invade Ukraine,
03:58that meeting was being chaired in the normal rotation of the Security Council by the ambassador from Russia.
04:06Meanwhile, the president of Russia, Putin, in that pre-recorded statement,
04:10in a thinly veiled warning really against the United States, said any foreign attempt to interfere with Russian action would lead to, in his words now,
04:20consequences they have never seen.
04:24We're live at the U.N. tonight.
04:25Josh Heinecker, Channel 7 Eyewitness News.
04:28Josh, thank you.
04:29Well, President Biden releasing a statement tonight saying,
04:31in part, the prayers of the entire world are with the people of Ukraine.
04:36It goes on to say,
04:37tomorrow I will meet with my G7 counterparts in the morning
04:40and then speak to the American people to announce the further consequences
04:44the United States and our allies and partners will impose on Russia
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