The fall of the first Ukrainian city to the Russian army bodes ill for the rest of the country. Russian forces, reports suggest, surrounded and starved the southern Dnieper River port of Kherson into submission. Kherson’s mayor told reporters that many citizens had been left dead and unrecognisable by high-calibre weapons used by the Russians to bombard his city. Vladimir Putin’s siege tactics, familiar to anyone who remembers Russia’s role in the 2017 battle for Aleppo in Syria, today amount to war crimes.
Russian soldiers are threatening to destroy Ukrainian cities unless they surrender. The mayor of Mariupol, on the Black Sea, said that Mr Putin’s army was attacking rail lines and road bridges, as well as cutting off water and electricity, to prevent civilians from escaping the shelling. In 2014, Mr Putin described Kyiv as “the mother of Russian cities”. That his military is preparing to encircle the Ukrainian capital with enough firepower to leave it a charred ruin shows his potential descent into criminal folly. One can only hope that one day the Russian president will be sitting in a dock at The Hague where his ramblings can be exposed for what they are: no defence for the senseless killing of innocents.
The criminality of Mr Putin’s invasion is staggering. He is sowing death and panic in Ukraine, with apparent little regard for civilian lives. His war is only a week old and Russian forces are already raining down cluster munitions on residential areas. Airstrikes, Ukrainian officials claim, hit schools and homes in the Chernihiv region. The French president’s assessment after talking to Mr Putin that the “worst is still to come” in Ukraine is unlikely to be a scare tactic. Some of Mr Putin’s own troops appear to have no stomach for an offensive war in Ukraine on the basis that they are, as Moscow claims, protecting Russia’s strategic interests. Instead the Ukrainian military casts opposing soldiers as hapless teenage invaders and wretched conscripts. Forcing poor young men to fight in an illegal war ought to be added to the list of charges Mr Putin might face.
Public opinion in the west will make it hard for European and US leaders to stand by while Ukrainians are slaughtered. Western nations are already sending arms to Ukraine’s army, though they have backed away from providing more fighter jets. Unless hostilities cease, anti-Moscow sentiment will only intensify in the coming weeks, and western leaders have a responsibility not to yield to reckless arguments about Nato confronting Russia militarily in a no-fly zone over Ukraine.
More than 1 million people have already fled the violence – with more to come. European countries are right to push for the creation of humanitarian corridors to allow the evacuation of civilians from war zones. There are some encouraging signs that such a proposal might be agreed in peace talks between Russia and Ukraine.
More than two centuries ago, Joseph de Maistre, the Sardinian kingdom’s diplomatic envoy to the tsarist court, noted Russians’ political apathy in observing that “every nation has the government it deserves”. But countries move on.
Before the outbreak of war, polls showed support for Mr Putin. That might change as sanctions bite. Moscow has already seen bank runs and street protests. Rumours have swept the capital Moscow that martial law is about to be imposed – but they were denied by the Kremlin on Thursday. However, the Russian authorities appear to be preparing the public for tough times ahead, notably by admitting hundreds of deaths among its troops fighting in Ukraine. Russians understandably worry what might happen if they rock the boat. Mr Putin knows that his public fear the government; but he is gambling that they fear being left to fend for themselves even more.
