Good morning. Welcome to Exos today. It's Friday, February 25th. I'm Nailibudu. As Russia's

war on Ukraine continues, we're going to Kiev and Washington for analysis. Today's

one big thing, the Ukrainian capital under siege.

Residents of Kiev woke up to their city under attack this morning. Ukrainian officials

say missile strikes and rockets are hitting residential buildings in the capital, which

is a population of about 3 million. As Russian troops pushed towards the center of the city,

the Ukraine government is urging civilians to also fight back with homemade grenades. Joining

us from Kiev is Neil Hower, a journalist with B&E and Telenus, based in the capital.

Hi, Neil. Hi, thanks for having me. Thanks for joining us. Can you tell us what you're

seeing right now? Yeah, I mean, right now, you know, we're at a apartment downtown,

mean a couple of colleagues. We spent last night in the shelter because we got warning

that there was going to be more cruise missile strikes, ballistic missile strikes on Kiev,

which was correct. And now we're hearing gunfire and, you know, occasional distant booms

from our apartment in downtown Kiev. So there's clearly fighting in the city. The speed

of it today has been pretty overwhelming. You know, it was expected that Russian troops

would surround Kiev in a few days, but to have the special forces already entering the downtown

of the capital and, you know, looking to perform, probably at this present moment, trying

to perform that decapitation strike in the Ukrainian government that we've read about

is pretty surreal. We've heard some reports that Ukrainian forces are pushing back Russian

troops. What are you hearing on the ground? I mean, whatever sort of initial success they

had in some areas yesterday, looks to have been largely undone. We know Russian special forces

have entered the capital and, you know, as reports that they're storming, that they're

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