Russia's military strike against its neighbour Ukraine is designed to claim air superiority before ground troops that have massed on the country's borders encircle Ukrainian forces from the north and south, experts told AFP.

The assault, after more than 150,000 Russian troops massed on Ukraine's borders in recent weeks, has been accompanied by a massive wave of air and missile strikes, while ground troops push on several fronts including towards the capital Kyiv.

The picture is of "a rapid Russian military campaign that seeks to rapidly dislocate, encircle and destroy Ukrainian forces in a multi-pronged assault", said Franz-Stefan Gady, a research fellow at the International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS).

"Russia... will try to see a rapid conclusion of this conflict," he added.

A series of explosions were heard in the capital, with Ukraine saying Russian forces had captured an airbase on Kyiv's outskirts while helicopters were seen flying in from the north.

Attackers "look like they're on the way" towards Kyiv from Belarus, including via pontoon bridges built to the north of the exclusion zone around the former Chernobyl nuclear power plant, said Francois Heisbourg of the Paris-based Foundation for Strategic Research (FRS).

The Russian armed forces -- vastly superior in numbers of armoured vehicles and especially air power -- said they had destroyed 74 Ukrainian military installations including 11 airbases and anti-aircraft systems.

Russian strikes also hit Kramatorsk, site of the Ukrainian military headquarters for the region, Kharkiv, the country's second-largest city near the frontier, Black Sea port Odessa and Mariupol, the city closest to the initial frontline.

- Air superiority -

Thursday's "Russian textbook" attack began with "a phase of preparing the battlefield... known as 'shaping'", a senior French military officer said on condition of anonymity.

By "neutralising all anti-air defences and airbases, eliminating electronic warfare equipment... they're in the process of seizing air superiority before ground manoeuvres," the officer added.

"With Russia in total control of the skies, the Ukrainians are in an impossible military situation," added Heisbourg.

Along with air superiority, Moscow could be trying to paralyse its neighbour's digital communications, with multiple websites of banks and ministries taken offline by so-called distributed denial of service (DDOS) attacks from Wednesday afternoon.

Kyiv has blamed Russian operatives for the cyberattacks, which Moscow has denied.

The senior French officer said that once air superiority was assured, "in the coming hours we'll see bridgeheads being taken, especially with airborne troops, and large-scale manoeuvres coming from Belarus, Crimea and the east."

Russia is "on course to occupy all of Ukraine", he predicted.

And with such a large share of his forces committed, President Vladimir Putin's "calculus is that NATO is not going to intervene", Gady said.

"If he had really feared an attack on Russian territory by NATO or by any other Western country, he would not have done this."

- Encirclement -

Sunny weather and firm, dry ground present the perfect conditions for both Russian aircraft and armoured vehicles to operate.

Multiple ground offensives, including from Belarus to the north and Crimea to the south, will likely aim to encircle the bulk of Ukrainian forces, which had been concentrated along the existing "line of contact" with two breakaway pro-Russian republics in the Donbas region.

"It's like a 21st-century version of the major European wars of the 20th century," especially World War II, Heisbourg said.

Russian troops "will attack the Ukrainian troops in their trenches from the rear, who will have no other option but to give up after selling their lives dearly", Heisbourg added.

But the attacking forces will be leery of engaging in street battles in Ukraine's cities.

"These types of military operations are extremely costly, they're man-intensive and also can be bloody," said Gady.

"If they do want to force the Ukrainian government into submission, I think they might actually lay siege to some of the cities... to force a political solution," he added.

As for the Ukrainians, they could drag out the conflict "if they are able to re-establish interior defensive lines and if they maintain their fighting morale," Gady said.

"Having said that, the chances for this to happen... at this moment are fairly small."

Bloodshed, tears in eastern Ukraine as Russia attacks
Chuguiv, Ukraine (AFP) Feb 24, 2022 - A son wept over the body of his father among the wreckage of a missile strike in a residential district in the eastern Ukrainian town of Chuguiv as the country reeled Thursday from Russia's invasion.

"I told him to leave," the man in his 30s sobbed, next to the twisted ruins of a car.

Nearby a woman screamed curses into the wintry sky.

A missile crater, some four to five metres wide, was scoured into the earth between two devastated five-storey apartment buildings. Firefighters battled to extinguish the remains of a blaze.

Several other buildings on the street were seriously damaged, their windows shattered and doorframes hanging in the frigid morning air.

It was among the first reported damage after Russia launched an invasion of Ukraine early Thursday, with explosions heard in several locations across the country in the early morning hours.

Residents said a 13-year-old was among those killed in the town, but there was no definitive death toll from the authorities.

Sergiy, 67, tried to use the leg of an Ikea table to block up his smashed window. He had received a few bruises but said he was fine.

"I'm going to stay here, my daughter is in Kyiv and it's the same there," he told AFP.

Sergiy thought the target had been the nearby military airfield, close to Ukraine's second city Kharkiv and just 40 kilometres (25 miles) from the Russian border.

"It was one of the targets that Putin had cited, I'm not even surprised," he said, refusing to give his surname.

"We will hang in there."

Thick black smoke could be seen billowing from the direction of the airfield -- one of a raft of strategic locations across the country pounded by Moscow's firepower in an opening barrage.

Teenager Anastasia clutched her grey cat as she watched her grandfather in a wheelchair being loaded onto a minibus waiting to rush them to a nearby village.

- 'Hope the war will spare us' -

"We could never have expected this. We're going to the village, we hope the war will spare us there," she said.

A few hours later teacher Olena Kurilo, 52, emerged from the town's hospital with her faced swathed in bandages. A missile had blasted shards of glass from her windows into her face.

Doctors said 20 wounded people remained in hospital for treatment.

"I only managed to think in that second 'My God, I'm not ready to die'," Kurilo said.

"I was in shock, I felt no pain."

She said she "never thought" that such an attack would come, but now it has she was in no mood to surrender.

"I will do everything for Ukraine, as much as I can," she said.

"Never, under any conditions will I submit to (Russian President Vladimir) Putin. It is better to die."

Ukrainian military personnel and trucks swarmed around the town as the government in Kyiv insisted its forces would do all they could to protect Ukraine.

Across Ukraine's vulnerable eastern front civilians and soldiers scrambled to react as one of the world's most powerful militaries began what authorities warned was a "full-scale invasion".

Some 250 kilometres to the south -- along the frontline where Russia-backed separatists have been fighting Ukraine -- authorities were rushing to evacuate civilians as fighting raged.

Local administrations reported heavy missile bombardments as Russian forces sought to advance -- cutting gas and electricity, and making evacuations impossible in some areas.

Official Vladimir Vesyelkin said missiles had rained down on his village of Starognativka since the morning and power was out.

"They are trying to wipe the village off the face of the earth," he said.

Yevgeny Kaplin, head of the humanitarian organisation Proliska, said attacks were going on across the entire frontline that had divided Ukrainian forces from an enclave held by Russian-backed rebels.

But poor communications were hampering information coming about victims.

"The offensive is underway along the entire demarcation line in the Lugansk and Donetsk regions," he said.

"Fighting is happening everywhere. We cannot yet receive information about victims, because there is no communication in this area."

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