KYIV, Feb 24 - Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on Thursday, unleashing airstrikes on cities and military bases and sending in troops and tanks from three sides in an attack that could rewrite the global post-Cold War security order.

Military forces battling Russians on multiple fronts, inflicting casualties on the attacking forces.

Russian President Vladimir Putin ignored global condemnation and cascading new sanctions as he unleashed the largest ground war in Europe since World War II, and chillingly referred to his country’s nuclear arsenal. He threatened any country trying to interfere with “consequences you have never seen.”

Ukrainian forces sought to fend off a Russian barrage of land- and sea-based missiles, an attack that one senior U.S. defense official described as the first salvo in a likely multi-phase invasion aimed at seizing key population centers and ultimately “decapitating” Ukraine’s government and installing a new one.

Ukraine officials said they had lost control of the decommissioned Chernobyl nuclear power plant, scene of the world’s worst nuclear disaster.

“Russia has embarked on a path of evil, but Ukraine is defending itself and won’t give up its freedom,” President Volodymyr Zelensky tweeted. His grasp on power increasingly tenuous, he pleaded Thursday for even more severe sanctions than the ones imposed by Western allies and ordered a full military mobilization that would last 90 days.

U.S. President Joe Biden announced new sanctions against Russia, saying Putin “chose this war” and that his country would bear the consequences of his action. Other nations also announced sanctions, or said they would shortly.

The invasion began early Thursday with a series of missile strikes, many on key government and military installations, quickly followed by a three-pronged ground assault. Ukrainian and U.S. officials said Russian forces were attacking from the east toward Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city; from the southern region of Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014; and from Belarus to the north. (ap/ez)