Blood is on Putin’s hands

As Russia claims to have finally captured Mariupol, it marks a strategic victory in the three long months of war in Ukraine.

The complete takeover gives Russian President Vladimir Putin a badly needed win in the war he began on February 24 — a conflict that was supposed to have been a lightning conquest for the Kremlin but instead has failed to take the capital of Kyiv, leading to a pullback of forces to refocus on eastern Ukraine, and the sinking of the flagship of Russia’s Black Sea fleet.

The invasion has also killed thousands of Ukrainian civilians and left a trail of shattered lives with millions displaced as refugees fled to neighbouring towns and countries.

Yarik Stepanenko, 11, his twin sister Yana and their mother, Natasha, were trying to catch a train west to safety from the eastern Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk when a missile hit the station on April 8.

Yana lost part of both legs: one just above the ankle, the other higher up her shin. Natasha lost her left leg below the knee.

Yarik, left at the station in the chaos of the attack, was uninjured and reunited with his mother and sister as they recovered in Lviv.

Russia claimed to have captured Mariupol after a nearly three-month siege that reduced much of the strategic port city to a smoking ruin, with more than 20,000 civilians feared dead.

Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu reported to Putin the “complete liberation” of the Azovstal steel plant — the last stronghold of Ukrainian resistance — and the city as a whole, spokesman Igor Konashenkov said yesterday. There was no immediate confirmation from Ukraine.

Russia’s state news agency RIA Novosti quoted the ministry as saying 2439 Ukrainian fighters who had been holed up at the steelworks had surrendered this week, including more than 500 yesterday. They were taken prisoner by the Russians, with some hospitalised and others moved to a former penal colony.