But if the explosions in Kyiv are any indication, the scope of the war was already extending far to the west of Donbas, Ukraine’s easternmost region. Putin’s speech suggested as much. He claimed that the U.S. was helping Ukraine build nuclear weapons, likened the Kyiv government to Nazis, and declared that the aims of his military operation are the “demilitarization and de-Nazification of Ukraine.”

In other words, Putin has embarked on a war of regime change. He means not merely to slice off a chunk of eastern Ukraine but to overthrow the Ukrainian government—which seeks association with the European Union and (some day) membership in NATO—and to replace it with a pliant proxy who would bring the country back into Moscow’s orbit.

For months, Russian ground forces have surrounded Ukraine from the east and the north, while naval forces—including troop-carriers and cruise-missile-firing ships—have done so from the south. If Putin has ordered a full-scale invasion, as worst-case scenarios had envisioned, attacks would come from all sides. In the pre-dawn hours, that was what started to happen.