Ukraine's foreign minister urged its allies to sever diplomatic ties with Russia, the RIA news agency reported on Thursday, after the Russian military invaded Ukraine.

"Ukraine has severed diplomatic relations with Russia. I call on all our partners to do the same. By this concrete step you will demonstrate that you stand by Ukraine and categorically reject the most blatant act of aggression in Europe since WWII," Dmytro Kuleba said on Twitter.

Russia launched a wide-ranging attack on Ukraine on Thursday, hitting cities and bases with airstrikes or shelling, as civilians piled into trains and cars to flee. Ukraine's government said Russian tanks and troops rolled across the border in a "full-scale war" that could rewrite the geopolitical order and whose fallout already reverberated around the world.

In unleashing Moscow's most aggressive action since the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, President Vladimir Putin deflected global condemnation and cascading new sanctions — and chillingly referred to his country’s nuclear arsenal. He threatened any foreign country attempting to interfere with "consequences you have never seen."