February 23, 2022

Ukraine’s president has made a desperate appeal to the Russian people asking them to “listen to the voice of reason” and stop a war he said the Kremlin has already ordered.

After Ukraine declared a state of emergency and started calling up reservists, Volodymyr Zelenskiy delivered a 10-minute video address in the early hours of Thursday morning, saying Vladimir Putin had not taken his call.

“Today I initiated a phone call with the president of the Russian Federation. The result was silence,” Zelenskiy said. For months, the Ukrainian president had played down the threat of invasion as alarmist, but by Thursday he was convinced that Europe was the brink of a horrendous new conflict.

Read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/23/ukraine-urges-its-citizens-to-leave-russia-immediately