Russia's moving on Kyiv and the plan appears to be to take out Ukraine's leadership, US defense official warns

• Russian forces invaded Ukraine early Thursday morning after a Putin announced a "special military operation."
• A senior US defense official told reporters Russian forces are moving on Kyiv, likely to topple the government.

Russian forces invaded Ukraine Thursday morning, and a senior US defense official says they are moving on Kyiv, likely to topple the country's government and install their own.

Russia is "making a move on Kyiv" a senior defense official who addressed reporters Thursday said, according to CNN.

The official, who acknowledged some murkiness on Russia's plans, said that the Pentagon believes that the Russians "have every intention of basically decapitating the government and installing their own method of governance, which would explain these early moves towards Kyiv."

"We would describe what you are seeing as an initial phase" of a "large-scale invasion," the official said, according to The Washington Post's Dan Lamothe.

Putin ordered a major military operation against Ukraine in an effort to, among other things, "demilitarize" and "de-Nazify" Ukraine, which is led by a Jewish president.

Shortly after the attack began, numerous blasts were reported near the capital Kyiv and the eastern city of Kharkiv.

In their talk with reporters Thursday, the senior defense official said that if the invasion continues "as we have come to believe that it will, it has every potential to be very bloody, very costly, and very impactful on European security writ large," Task & Purpose's Haley Britzky reported.

"We haven't seen a conventional move like this, nation state [to] nation state, since since World War II, certainly nothing on this size and scope and scale," the official said, according to Politico's Paul McLeary.

The assault on Ukraine appears to be moving along three main axes, with forces striking from around Belarus, from Crimea, and from western Russia, and there may be more to come.

A former NATO commander warned that Russia may try to capture Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelensky.

"I think he's gonna go full-bore, get to Kyiv, try and capture Zelensky," former NATO Supreme Allied Commander retired US Navy adm. James Stavridis told NBC's "Today" show, speaking of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

His remarks appear to be in line with those from the senior defense official.