SOURCE: AL JAZEERA AND NEWS AGEN­CIES

■ Pres­i­dent Volodymyr Ze­len­skyy says the gov­ern­ment will is­sue weapons to every cit­i­zen who wants to de­fend Ukraine ■

(AL JAZEERA) — Ukrain­ian Pres­i­dent Volodymyr Ze­len­skyy has called on all cit­i­zens who are ready to de­fend the coun­try from Russ­ian forces to come for­ward, say­ing Kyiv will is­sue weapons to every­one who wants them.

Rus­sia launched an all-out in­va­sion of Ukraine by land, air and sea on Thurs­day, the biggest at­tack by one state against an­oth­er in Eu­rope since World War II, con­firm­ing the worst fears of the West.

Ze­len­skyy al­so urged Rus­sians to come out and protest against the war.

“To every­one in the Russ­ian Fed­er­a­tion who has not lost their con­science, it’s time to come out with protests against the war with Ukraine,” he said.

He al­so urged glob­al lead­ers to pro­vide de­fence as­sis­tance to Ukraine and help pro­tect its air­space from Russ­ian ag­gres­sion.

“I talked to [US Pres­i­dent Joe] Biden, [UK Prime Min­is­ter] John­son, [Pres­i­dent of the Eu­ro­pean Coun­cil] Charles Michel, [Pol­ish Pres­i­dent An­drzej] Du­da, [Lithuan­ian Pres­i­dent Gi­tanas] Nause­da,” he said.

“We start­ed putting to­geth­er an an­ti-Putin coali­tion. I have al­ready urged glob­al lead­ers to slam Putin with all pos­si­ble sanc­tions, of­fer large-scale de­fence sup­port and close the air­space over Ukraine for the ag­gres­sor. To­geth­er we must save Ukraine, save the de­mo­c­ra­t­ic world, and we will do it.”

Mean­while, an ad­vis­er to Ze­len­skyy said about 40 peo­ple have been killed so far in Rus­sia’s in­va­sion.

Olek­sii Arestovich al­so said that sev­er­al dozen peo­ple have been wound­ed. He did not spec­i­fy whether the ca­su­al­ties in­clud­ed civil­ians.

‘Geno­cide’ at­tempt

Don­nacha Ó Beacháin, a pro­fes­sor of post-So­vi­et pol­i­tics at Dublin City Uni­ver­si­ty and au­thor of an up­com­ing book, The Do­mes­tic Pol­i­tics of Post-So­vi­et Un­recog­nised States, told Al Jazeera from Ire­land’s cap­i­tal Dublin that Putin’s jus­ti­fi­ca­tions for go­ing to war in Ukraine were “re­mark­able”.

“He’s blamed NA­TO, he calls the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment, which is de­mo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly elect­ed, a jun­ta, he says he’s on the hunt now for neo-Nazis, his speech con­tained all sorts of his­tor­i­cal false­hoods,” he said.

“We are see­ing a de­struc­tion of a state in the 21st cen­tu­ry in cen­tral Eu­rope … Putin made it clear that he doesn’t recog­nise a sep­a­rate Ukrain­ian peo­ple. He doesn’t recog­nise that there is Ukraine … This is an at­tempt to de­stroy a peo­ple, lit­er­al­ly a geno­cide.”