PUTIN SHELLS FLEEING WOMEN AND CHILDREN

Global outrage as Russia ignores agreed ceasef ire

RUSSIAN president Vladimir Putin faced a wave of international fury last night for offering safe passage to Ukrainian refugees – only to bombard them with artillery as they fled.

Desperate Ukrainians trying to escape some of the fiercest fighting since the start of the war found themselves trapped after Russian forces were accused of ignoring an agreed ceasefire.

It came after Putin earlier said crippling western sanctions on Russia were akin to ‘a declaration of war’.

And he warned that any attempt to impose a no-fly zone in Ukraine would lead to ‘catastrophic consequences’ for the world.

A mass civilian evacuation of more than 215,000 refugees from the encircled cities of Mariupol and Volnovakha was derailed yesterday when Russian forces ignored a promised ceasefire and continued artillery

attacks. Before Russia announced the ceasefire, Ukraine had urged Moscow to create humanitarian corridors to allow children, women and the older adults to flee the fighting, calling them ‘question number one’.

The Russian defence ministry yesterday claimed its units were opening humanitarian corridors near the two cities for a period of five hours to allow families to flee.

However, Ukrainian authorities later announced both evacuations were axed because Russian forces had continued to pound the cities.

In a televised broadcast, Ukrainian presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovych said Russia was not observing an agreed ceasefire in some areas, preventing a joint plan to allow civilians to evacuate.

In other developments in the conflict yesterday:

Sanctions are ‘akin to a declaration of war’

■ Putin warned the West that implementing a no-fly zone would have ‘colossal and catastrophic consequences’. Speaking to a group of female airline pilots, he said the West’s sanctions ‘are akin to a declaration of war’

■ Russia experienced its worst day in the skies. Footage emerged of a Russian attack helicopter being blown out of the sky while Ukrainian sources claimed eight enemy aircraft had been destroyed, including fighter jets

■ Deeply distressing images emerged of a mother cradling the lifeless body of her 18month-old boy killed in an artillery strike on Friday

■ Russia appeared to be using bases in Belarus to launch long-range missiles into

Ukraine for the first time

■ In an astonising act of bravery, 2,000 civilians marched through the streets of the occupied city of Kherson shouting ‘Russians go home’

■ Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky claimed his forces have killed around 10,000 Russian troops – far more than the 498 claimed by Moscow

■ He also attacked Nato leaders for refusing to impose a nofly zone over Ukraine, claiming the West had given Russia a ‘green light’ to continue its blitz of towns and cities.

In and emotional address, the Ukrainian President said: ‘All the people who die from this day forward will also die because of you, because of your weakness, because of your lack of unity.’ Ukraine’s foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba accused NATO of bending to Russian pressure.

He said he was open to talks with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, but only if they were ‘meaningful’.

As the fighting intensified last night, Ukrainian-Irish citizens and residents who returned to defend their homeland were preparing to face the reinforced Russian troops converging on Kyiv.

Maksym Savych, 23, who lives in Co. Laois where he works as a forklift driver, is now commanding a platoon of 45 fighters behind the barricades in the Ukrainian capital. He told the Irish Mail on Sunday: ‘[We] are preparing to go on a mission. Our guys are defending the airport.’

One of the men serving in his platoon, Irish citizen Stanislav Lepko, who has lived in Tallanstown, Co. Louth, for 21 years, said they expect to be called into action ‘soon’.

Meanwhile, as international condemnation of the war reaches a crescendo, the MoS has learned plans to fast track a new law that would give the Government CAB-style powers to seize the assets of oligarchs have been scuppered by parliamentary red-tape.

Former Labour leader Brendan Howlin had sought to introduce new legislation, called the Magnitsky Bill, in the Dáil this week.

Mr Howlin told the MoS: ‘It is unthinkable we wouldn’t act when France and Germany are already acting to seize yachts.’

‘All those who die will be because of you’