Ukraine’s capital endured a hail of rocket attacks and braced itself for an onslaught by troops as Russian troops encountered stiff resistance but pushed their way into the ex-Soviet state from three directions.

Western leaders denounced the Russian advance and announced an array of sanctions, aimed mostly at hitting the Russian economy, but Ukraine was left largely on its own to withstand the advance of Moscow’s vastly more numerous and powerful army. NATO leaders were due to hold a virtual summit on Friday.

Among the strategic sites captured on the first day of the assault was the Chernobyl nuclear power station north of Kyiv, where staff still oversee the plant, though no reactors are in operation 36 years after the world’s worst nuclear accident.

Residents of Kyiv, huddled in their thousands in cellars, shelters and in the city’s deep metro system, enjoyed little sleep as rockets exploded in and near the city in the early morning. Officials said a number of targets were struck, but it was too early for an assessment of the damage.

Fighting was raging in small towns north of Kyiv. An overnight curfew was in place in the capital as part of martial law provisions.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, in periodic video messages, said he was determined to stay in Kyiv, but said he and his family figured prominently on a Russian “hit list”.

He said 137 Ukrainians had died on the first day of Russia’s attack on the country – among them 13 border guards killed while defending Serpent Island, a remote Black Sea outcropping.

Civilian targets

“They say that civilian objects are not a target for them,” Zelensky said in an early morning televised address. “It is a lie. They do not distinguish in which areas to operate.”

He said that “in most directions the enemy was stopped, the fighting continues. The purpose of this attack is pressure, not only on the government, but on all Ukrainians.”

In an earlier address, Zelensky said he had spoken to various NATO leaders and lamented the lack of commitment to Ukraine, – the country was left to face the Russian military on its own.

“We have been left alone to defend our state,” Zelensky said. “Who is ready to fight alongside us? I don’t see anyone. Who is ready to give Ukraine a guarantee of NATO membership? Everyone is afraid.”

NATO members have been providing Ukraine with a variety of lethal weaponry in recent months. But Alliance leaders, notably U.S. President Joe Biden, had made it plain that they were not prepared to dispatch troops to Ukraine in the weeks of a buildup with tens of thousands of Russian troops moving closer to the border.

The notion of NATO membership, an integral provision in Ukraine’s constitution, is a key element in Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin’s decision to wage war on the country. Russia denied for weeks as it engineered the buildup that it had any intention of invading Ukraine, but Putin complained that Western countries had all but dismissed its calls for security guarantees – including an undertaking that NATO would expand no further and Ukraine would never be allowed to join.

In Moscow, Putin told business leaders the invasion had been necessary as there was no other way to ensure his country’s security.

“What was happening left us with no choice,” the Russian leader said in televised comments. “We had no other way of proceeding”.

Putin has repeatedly said authorities in Kyiv have committed “genocide” in eastern Ukraine.

In his address declaring war on Ukraine, Putin said the operation sought not to occupy the country but to proceed with “demilitarisation” and “denazification” – a reference to Russia’s rejection of Ukraine’s leaders as inveterate nationalists since a Russian-friendly president was forced to flee the country by mass demonstrations in 2014. That upheaval was followed by Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the fomenting of a rebellion by Kremlin proxies in Eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region.

U.S. President Joe Biden led Western denunciations of Moscow and set forth a list of punitive measures against Russian banks and other institutions, including state-owned enterprises. He said the measures would impede Russia from doing business in major world currencies.

“Putin is the aggressor,” Biden said. “Putin chose this war. And now he and his country will bear the consequences.”

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced what he called “the largest and most severe package of economic sanctions that Russia has ever seen”, including the exclusion of major Russian banks from the British financial system.

Putin, he said, was a “bloodstained aggressor” who would “stand condemned in the eyes of the world and of history”.

French President Emmanuel Macron, who led a feverish attempt to bring Putin and Biden together at a summit days before the invasion, spoke to Putin on Thursday in what the Kremlin said was an “exhaustive” explanation of the invasion. Macron said the action was “contrary to all the commitments made by the Russian authorities”.

“He decided to inflict the most significant damage on peace and stability in Europe for decades,” Macron said.

No EU agreement on Russian SWIFT exclusion

But belying their declarations of unity, EU leaders at a meeting failed to adopt what many said would be the most effective punitive action – disconnecting Russia from the SWIFT system of international payments which gives Moscow access to foreign currency.

That prompted a furious reaction from Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba.

“I will not be diplomatic on this,” Kuleba tweeted. “Everyone who now doubts whether Russia should be banned from Swift has to understand that the blood of innocent Ukrainian men, women and children will be on their hands too. BAN RUSSIA FROM SWIFT.”

In the weeks leading up to the invasion, Western leaders, particularly European leaders, had launched a frenzy of diplomatic contacts to prevent any outbreak of war – Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Sholz made lightning visits to both capitals.

Macron had called for efforts to focus on the two “Minsk accords” signed in 2014 and 2015 as the basis for a diplomatic solution. But Putin granted formal recognition to two separatist “people’s republic” days before the invasion, effectively burying any attempt at a negotiated settlement.

Sholz earlier this week suspended the registration process for the Nord Stream 2 pipeline – which would double the volume of Russian gas that could be supplied to Germany and Western Europe.