PUTIN ‘BENT ON FULL INVASION'

BORIS WARNING AS FOOTAGE APPEARS TO SHOW RUSSIAN TROOPS INSIDE UKRAINE | Full-scale invasion will be catastrophic, warns Boris

- Nicholas Cecil, David Bond and Will Stewart

VLADIMIR PUTIN appears “bent on a full-scale invasion” of Ukraine, Boris Johnson warned today amid reports that Russian tanks had already started rolling into territory held by Moscow-backed separatists. The Prime Minister vowed to unleash a “barrage of sanctions” as part of the West’s attempts to avert, at the 11th-hour, a bloody war in Ukraine. He warned that the Russian President’s military action “must ultimately fail — and be seen to fail”.

But the invasion appeared already to be under way with a convoy of military vehicles seen in Makiivka, in the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), recognised last night as an independent state by Mr Putin. Other footage showed army vehicles at other locations in the DPR and in the neighbouring Luhansk People’s Republic (LPR), also recognised by the Kremlin. Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said it still needed to be verified that these tanks and trucks were definitely Russian.

However, amid the spiralling tension, his Cabinet colleague Sajid Javid said people could “conclude that the invasion of Ukraine has already begun” and that “we are waking up to a very dark day in Europe”. In other developments today: