Zelenskyy earlier announced martial law across the country after Russian President Vladimir Putin said he was launching an offensive to, in his words, \u201cdemilitarise and denazify\u201d <\/em>Ukraine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On another development, Ukrainian State Air Traffic Service announced Thursday that the\u00a0Ukrainian airspace was closed to civilian use due to \u201chigh risk\u201d<\/em> to civil aviation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Separately, Russia announced the closure to civilian flights of its airspace on the western border with both Ukraine and Belarus, Anadolu Agency reported.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Early Thursday Russia announced a military intervention in Ukraine, drawing international condemnation and vows of tougher sanctions on Moscow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Explosions were reported in several Ukrainian provinces, including the capital Kyiv, and tanks reportedly crossed the border from Belarus into Ukraine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Putin’s announcement of military intervention early Thursday drew international condemnation and announcements of tougher sanctions on Moscow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The intervention followed a month-long buildup of some 100,000 troops around Ukraine, with Russia repeatedly denying any intent to launch an invasion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n NMT<\/a> as reported by Bernama<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" ANKARA, Feb 24\u00a0 —\u00a0Ukraine on Thursday severed diplomatic ties with Russia, hours after Moscow launched…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13373,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[59],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13372","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/Screen-Shot-2022-02-24-at-21.03.12.png",583,319,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/Screen-Shot-2022-02-24-at-21.03.12-150x150.png",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/Screen-Shot-2022-02-24-at-21.03.12-300x164.png",300,164,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/Screen-Shot-2022-02-24-at-21.03.12.png",583,319,false],"large":["https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/Screen-Shot-2022-02-24-at-21.03.12.png",583,319,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/Screen-Shot-2022-02-24-at-21.03.12.png",583,319,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/Screen-Shot-2022-02-24-at-21.03.12.png",583,319,false],"newsium-slider-full":["https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/Screen-Shot-2022-02-24-at-21.03.12.png",583,319,false],"newsium-featured":["https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/Screen-Shot-2022-02-24-at-21.03.12.png",583,319,false],"newsium-medium":["https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/Screen-Shot-2022-02-24-at-21.03.12.png",583,319,false]},"author_info":{"info":["Editor"]},"category_info":"World<\/a>","tag_info":"World","comment_count":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13372","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13372"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13372\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13374,"href":"https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13372\/revisions\/13374"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13373"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"moscow\"](\"https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/Screen-Shot-2022-02-24-at-21.03.12.png\")
<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n