In Thursday’s television news, coverage included haunting aerial shots of empty Kiev streets, punctuated by the sound of air raid sirens and occasional explosions. Some correspondents recounted the events from the safety of hotel room balconies; others have been seen wearing body armor and helmets in more perilous situations.

Clarissa Ward, CNN’s chief international correspondent, interviewed frightened Ukrainians from inside a crowded Kharkiv metro station where people had fled to hide from the shelling. “By the time we got here there were more explosions, people were running down the stairs in this tube station,” Ms Ward said. tells viewers.

CNN International chief Mike McCarthy said in an interview that the network has 75 people in Ukraine, including local drivers and interpreters. The network uses the city of Lviv in western Ukraine as a base, in part to ensure broadcasts are not interrupted by cyberattacks that could affect Kiev. He said CNN has “six or seven” back-up communication systems in the event of an outage.

CNN’s newsroom faced turmoil this month with the abrupt ousting of its longtime chairman, Jeff Zucker. David Zaslav, chief executive of Discovery Inc., which is about to merge with CNN’s parent company, WarnerMedia, said on a conference call Thursday that the network’s coverage of the invasion was “a proud moment”.

MSNBC has also gone into breaking news mode, although, like Fox News, it has highlighted its most popular opinion leaders. Rachel Maddow, who was on a two-month hiatus from the network, returned Thursday to host primetime coverage.

Amid the gravity of a high-stakes international conflict that has threatened Europe’s modern security structure, some viewers captured lighter moments. Some partisan accounts on Twitter pointed to the jarring nature of an Applebee ad, featuring a jingle about “a little fried chicken”, which aired during CNN coverage. (Applebee later said he contacted CNN to pause his network ad; “it should never have aired,” a rep for the restaurant chain said.)