Please help us save the vulnerable

The desperate plight of Ukraine’s 100,000 orphans will break your heart. Many have been abandoned by their care staff who understandably want to be with their own families at this time. For others, meagre stocks of food, water and medicine could run out this week.

And even the lucky ones who can get away from the horror of the Russian shelling may not be so lucky in the long run.

With no adequate tracking to identify which children are where, they could easily fall into the hands of paedophiles or people-traffickers.

That is why the Sunday Mirror is today launching an appeal to save them from both Vladimir Putin and predators.

And we know you will open your hearts to them by donating to the charity Hope and Homes for Children, which is doing its best to rescue them and keep them safe.

Brits are a big-hearted people – which is why we are also lining up to open our homes to refugees under Michael Gove’s new settlement scheme for Ukrainians.

PREPARED

This war will cost Ukrainians most, but we must all be prepared to pay for it.

And all must mean all. Motor fuel will keep going up as oil heads for $200 a barrel.

Sanctions will hit home-heating bills, especially if Europe cuts off the 40% of Russian gas it relies on, sending prices soaring.

That means businesses must contribute their fair share by raising wages a little more than planned. Rishi Sunak must look again at imposing a £342-a-year tax hike next month.

While oligarchs have lost their yachts, mansions and football clubs, it will be this week that ordinary Russians will begin to feel the pinch as IKEA furniture and their favourite American hamburgers disappear.

Perhaps they will then begin to realise that they do not have a rational leader but a tyrant in the mould of Joseph Stalin as their president.

They may also realise that threatening 15 years’ jail for not parroting official fake news and locking up thousands of anti-war protesters are the actions of a demented dictator. Russians may then realise they must get rid of Putin.