Russian President Vladimir Putin declared a "special military operation for the demilitarization and de-Nazification of Ukraine" early Thursday. The chilling announcement was immediately followed by reports on missile strikes on military facilities across Ukraine, propelling the country located in a geographical hub of Europe into war.

In his television announcement at 6:00 a.m. Moscow Time, 10:00 p.m. EST, Putin announced that "the leading NATO countries, in order to achieve their own goals, support extreme nationalists and Neo-Nazis in Ukraine" who "will never forgive the Crimeans and Sevastopol residents for choosing reunification with Russia," referring to the events of 2014, when Russia annexed the Ukrainian peninsula Crimea, home of a Russian large naval base at Sevastopol. Those "Neo-Nazi" forces, Putin claimed, were ready to "crawl" into the Crimea and two pro-Russian separatist republics in the Donbas region — Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics, DPR and LPR, respectively — "in order to kill."

He continued,

We have been left with no other option to protect Russia and our people, but for the one that we will be forced to use today. The situation requires us to take decisive and immediate action.