It has been a day of horrifying escalation in the face of breathtaking defiance by the Ukrainians.
Vladimir Putin has increased his bombardment of city after city.
From Kharkiv, where Russian paratroopers landed, in the north to the outskirts of Kyiv, to the southern cities of Kherson and the port of Mariupol.
The Ukraine government says more than 2000 men, women and children have lost their lives.
For the first time, Russia's conceded it has lost almost 500 troops, although the Ukrainians say it's more like 10 times that.
Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city, is now a site of missile-strike devastation. What's left of the University building burns and crumbles.
Most here are Russian speakers, the very people Putin claims to be liberating, as the innocent and injured are pulled from the rubble.
"It's been hell. Literal hell. So, that's it. People are really frightened," a Ukrainian woman says.
"My father lives in Kharkiv, he's in another part of town, he lives there right now so we just call him every time there's an explosion to ask him if he's alive, and that's it."
The explosions are all the more terrifying and unbelievable from up close.
To the East and West of the Capital Kyiv, smaller towns have begun to look like the same barren landscapes of smoke and rubble.
But so far one of the worst-hit is the southern coastal city of Mariupol, home to 400,000 and encircled by Russian forces.
The city's mayor says hundreds of civilians have already been killed.
There is no electricity, water or fuel and on the outskirts of the city anyone attempting to leave faces a large Russian armoured column.
The troops are suspicious even of the media.
"We were staring down the barrel," journalist John Irvine says.
But still, Ukrainians retaliate any way they can, using their own bodies to stop advancing Russians. A giant human roadblock had formed at the entrance to the town that's home to Europe's largest nuclear power station.
Despite more than 2000 lives already lost a crowd fearlessly faces off with a tank.
And in the strategic city of Kherson, a crowd refused to back down to a Russian soldier holding two grenades. The mayor posed a simple ultimatum to the crowd: fight or surrender.
They chose to fight.
President Zelensky's negotiators are still meeting the Russians, but he believes nothing can move forward without a ceasefire.
"If those sides are ready it means that they are ready for the peace. If they aren't ready, then it is just, you know, wasting time," he said.
And for those who have already escaped to places of refuge like Poland with their children, belongings and pets, they are at least safe but they are away from home and without anywhere to go.
With every hour the cost of this war grows greater. The UN's latest figures show that close to 836,000 refugees have now left Ukraine in just six days, more than half of them have escaped to Poland. Regular families now find themselves asleep on the floor of a mall, praying it'll be safe enough to return home soon.
141 member states of the United Nations have voted overwhelmingly for Russia to stop this invasion. New Zealand joined 39 countries in asking the International Criminal Court to investigate alleged war crimes.
But that means nothing right now to the thousands being killed by Vladimir Putin's onslaught and he shows no signs of slowing down.
