Russian president Vladimir Putin has authorised a special military operation in Ukraine's Donbass region and told the Ukrainian military to lay down their weapons and go home.
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'I decided to conduct a special military operation', Putin said in a special televised address on Russian state TV. Putin said he 'aims to protect people who have been bullied and subjected to genocide by the Kyiv regime for eight years'. A Reuters reporter in Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, heard explosions which sounded like artillery shelling in the distance

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