Kyiv is expected to fall by the weekend with “enemy sabotage groups” already having entered the Ukraine capital, it is reported.
The Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Facebook that he has been targeted as “enemy number one” for Vladimir Putin whose aim is believed to be to topple the country by taking out the head of state.
He said that “enemy sabotage groups” were in Kyiv and he has also ordered all males aged 18 to 60 to conscript in the army and forbade them from leaving the country.
“According to our information, the enemy has identified me as the number one target. My family is the number two target,” said Zelensky.
“They want to destroy Ukraine politically by destroying the head of state.”
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He added that “enemy sabotage groups have entered Kyiv.”
It comes after Russian forces invaded Ukraine on Thursday in a massed assault by land, sea and air, the biggest attack by one state against another in Europe since World War Two.
In a full-scale war, Ukraine has already lost the strategic Chernobyl nuclear site where troops had a fierce battle with Russian soldiers.
There was also fighting at Hostomel airport, just outside Kyiv, where Russian paratroopers landed. A Ukrainian official later said the airfield had been recaptured, while a senior US defence official said Russian forces were advancing closer to Kyiv.
Zelensky has said that 137 civilians and military personnel have been killed so far with 316 injured and he has said he will stay in the capital where he is believed to be sheltering in a bunker.
US intelligence believes that it is the aim of the Russian army to surround Kyiv and then force the city to surrender and fight it into submission.
Either way the capital is expected to fall in the next few days.
A former senior US intelligence officer told Newsweek : “After the air and artillery end and the ground war really starts, I think Kyiv falls in just a few days.
“The military may last slightly longer but this isn’t going to last long.”
The White House is expressing outrage at "credible reports" from Ukrainian officials that staff at the shuttered Chernobyl nuclear plant have also been taken hostage by Russian troops.
Press secretary Jen Psaki said on Thursday that "we condemn it and we request their release".
Ms Psaki said the US has no assessment on the state of the plant where radioactivity is still leaking decades after the worst nuclear disaster in history.
But she said hostage taking could hamper efforts to maintain the nuclear facility and is "incredibly alarming and greatly concerning".
Ms Psaki spoke after Alyona Shevtsova, an adviser to the commander of Ukraine's Ground Forces, wrote on Facebook the staff at the Chernobyl plant had been "taken hostage" when Russian troops seized the facility.
