Last night, Vladimir Putin bombed a maternity hospital. A six-year-old is among three of the dead. At least 17 more, including doctors and pregnant women, were injured in the explosion in Mariupol.
The Ministry of Defence says Russia has also confirmed the use of thermobaric weapons whose destructive force is akin to generating flammable particles which kill you from the inside. And the Kremlin is now rolling the pitch for the use of chemical weapons with further “false flag” disinformation campaigns.
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, has called on Europe to intensify sanctions on Russia for its atrocities. He may be in receipt of defensive weaponry and standing ovations from Western parliaments, but his major ask — a no-fly zone over his battered nation — remains off the table.
Closing the skies over Ukraine would represent a dramatic escalation by Nato, potentially requiring not only shooting down Russian jets but also hitting targets in Russia and Belarus. But because we can’t do everything, doesn’t mean we mustn’t do more.
Foreign Secretary Liz Truss is calling for a “paradigm shift”. Sanctions on more oligarchs, including Roman Abramovich, were announced this morning. And crucially, Britain must ditch this dystopian, bureaucratic visa regime and allow Ukrainian refugees entry. To do otherwise is to turn our backs on this horror.
