One man could end this hellish suffering

IT IS now day 69 of the war in Ukraine and at no point are the horrifying humanitarian stories easing. Every day we see pictures of children and adults, men and women, soldiers and civilians in the most horrific of states.

Those fleeing Mariupol have described weeks of bombardments and deprivations as they arrived in Ukrainian-held territory. Mariupol is almost fully under Russian control, but Ukrainian soldiers have continued to defend the steelworks. When you look at aerial images of the city it is a shell, and now thankfully some people have been evacuated. More than 100 civilians from the steel plant are fleeing to Zaporizhzhia with hopes more will follow, however shelling has resumed.

Before the weekend evacuation, about 1,000 civilians were also believed to be in the sprawling, Soviet-era steel plant, along with an estimated 2,000 Ukrainian fighters and as many as 100,000 people may still be in Mariupol overall.

Denys Shlega, commander of the 12th Operational Brigade of Ukraine’s National Guard, said in a televised interview that several hundred civilians remain trapped alongside nearly 500 wounded soldiers and “numerous” dead bodies.

Today stories of three children living on one small bowl of soup once per day and having just a glass of water to clean themselves have emerged. They drank rainwater from puddles. A woman, clutching her eyes, has described not seeing sunlight for two months. Thousands are dead, millions are displaced. People the world over are seeing changes to their lives because of this war, but none as much as those who live there or who have family there.

In his nightly address on Sunday, Mr Zelenskyy accused Moscow of waging “a war of extermination”, saying Russian shelling had hit food, grain and fertiliser warehouses, and yet despite all these stories, a full picture of the battle unfolding in eastern Ukraine is hard to capture. It will take years for these atrocities to be mapped and years of repairs once the war is over to rebuild the country.

European Union energy ministers were meeting yesterday to discuss a new set of sanctions, which could include restrictions on Russian oil – though Russia-dependent members of the 27-nation bloc including Hungary and Slovakia are wary of taking tough action.

But nothing the West is doing is coming quickly enough for people living in these desperate conditions, and in absolute fear for their lives and the lives of their children. One man could stop this now, but that sadly remains a distant probability.