New Brunswickers with family in Ukraine watching hour by hour

New Brunswickers with family in Ukraine are checking on their loved ones by the hour and watching intently, along with the rest of the world, as Russian military forces attack Kyiv and many other parts of the country.

Russia launched an invasion by land, air and sea on Thursday that President Vladimir Putin said was to "protect" people, including Russian citizens, from "genocide" — a claim denounced by Canada and other western countries as absurd propaganda.

Vitaliy Stoyan, who lives in the Moncton area, said his mother, aunt and sister in Dnipro, in central Ukraine, woke to horrible noise when air raids started.

An air base near them was hit with ballistic missiles, he said.

His wife's sister and her family are in Kyiv.

They also woke up to the sound of missile strikes and hid in an improvised shelter in the basement of their apartment building with about 100 other people.

At one point they decided to go home to their beds, he said, but another blast nearly knocked them out of bed, and they rushed back to the shelter.

His sister in Dnipro works as an emergency room anesthesiologist. She hasn't been mobilized yet, he said, but might be.

The hospital where she works has cancelled all non-urgent surgeries, said Stoyan, to free space for the wounded.

Stoyan's brother-in-law in Kyiv has relatives in Russia.

They have no idea about the scale of the invasion, he said

They think it's just in the Donbask region, the disputed area between southeastern Ukraine and Russia.

Natalia Haidash of Moncton calls, texts or video chats with her family every hour or two.

"It's getting closer to them and it's getting harder to endure it," she said.