Nowadays it's made apparent in official press conferences that Russian troops had advanced on Kyiv, e.g. like in this one from the Russian MoD from March 25:
Putin also explained in his speech on the 16th of March why military operations had to happen in other parts of Ukraine besides the Donbass, although I think he wasn't too explicit then that (at least the outskirts of) Kyiv were part of the operations.
I don't watch a lot of Russian TV, but I seem to recall that in the early days of the "special military operation" (end of February), the coverage of that on Russian TV was limited to the Donbass republics. So, I'm guessing this was in line with official communications.
On Feb 25, TASS wrote that Ukrainians had aimed Grad rockets (supposedly from some square in Kyiv) at the Antonov airport (in Hostomel), but it didn't exactly say why they might have done that. The Russian paratroopers' presence on the airport was not mentioned in that piece. I suppose the English version might have been shorter than what was relayed in Russian on TV etc., but I'm not sure.
On March 13, the Western press picked up some Russian MoD footage that supposedly showed the airborne operation at Hostomel (some 16 days after it happened). This might have been released in Russia before March 13, but again, I'm not sure. Also, it appears that the (more precise) identification of the location from the footage was done by the Western press. At least on the MoD's youtube channel, the footage caption just says it's an airport in Ukraine.
Anyhow, when was (roughly) the first time that areas around Kyiv were officially acknowledged by high-level Russian officials as places where the Russian troops had advanced to?
