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 yesterday from Russia’s invasion.

He threatened to impose the harshest sanctions ever on Russia. He worked to galvanise US allies into a united front. He supplied Ukraine with more weapons than any American president before him. And he beefed up US forces on Nato’s eastern flank as reassurance of his commitment.

Although Ukrainians had been warned for weeks that war with Russia was imminent, when the attacks finally came Thursday many seemed not to know how to react.

“I was in deep sleep. It was around five in the morning. Suddenly, I felt like the whole house shook with a loud noise. As soon as I woke up, I heard sounds of a few more bombs. The doors and windows of the house were shaking.

Russian forces fired missiles at several Ukrainian cities and landed troops on its south coast on Thursday, officials and media said, after President Vladimir Putin authorised what he called a special military operation in the east.