Ukraine's football league is paused for a minimum of 30 days after Putin launched full-scale invasion of Ukraine

     

 

The Ukrainian Premier League has been paused for a minimum of 30 days after  Russia's president Vladimir Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. 

 

The league was meant to restart on Friday following its winter break but the league confirmed via their official website that the start has been delayed after the introduction of martial law overnight by Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelenskyy. 

 

There will now be doubts whether Ukraine's World Cup play-off match against Scotland in Glasgow will take place as planned on March 24.

 

Russia have launched an all-out war on Ukraine with missiles and bombs, tanks rolling across the border from Belarus, troops parachuted down on eastern regions, and explosions seen across the country after Putin gave the order for his forces to attack.

 

'Hundreds' of Ukrainian troops were killed in early clashes, Kiev said, as the fight came to them on all fronts at a moment's notice. Cruise missiles, guided bombs, and GRAD rockets took out targets from east to west - aimed at airfields, military bases, ammo dumps, and command posts.

 

It came after Vladimir Putin gave an extraordinary early-morning address to the Russian nation in which he declared a 'special military operation' to 'de-militarise' and 'de-Nazify' Ukraine in what amounted to an outright declaration of war.

 

The Russian strongman also issued a chilling warning to any country thinking of coming to Ukraine's aid, vowing 'consequences greater than any you have faced in history'.  

 

Five Russian jets were reportedly shot out of the sky over the eastern Donbass region before Moscow boasted of taking out all anti-aircraft defences, giving them control of the skies. 

 

Ukrainian border guards said they had come under attack by heavy artillery, tanks, and troops from Russia and Belarus - as Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko threw his forces into the fight. 

 

Luhansk, Sumy, Kharkiv and Chernihiv in the east of Ukraine all reported coming under attack, but blasts were also reported in the west - in Zhytomyr and Lviv, close to the border with Poland.