Joe Biden has warned that Vladimir Putin’s “back is against the wall” after the failure of his lightning invasion plan which has seen thousands of Russian soldiers killed.
The US president stressed that an increasingly desperate Mr Putin could resort to even more barbaric tactics in Ukraine, including possibly the use of chemical weapons, as he seeks to overcome fierce resistance.
British defence chiefs said Ukrainian forces had again repulsed Russian attempts to seize the southern city of Mariupol. But the sheer horror of what the Russian president is inflicting on the people of Ukraine was laid bare by reports that children in Mariupol, a thriving port city only weeks ago, were now dying from dehydration.
Speaking to business leaders in Washington last night, Mr Biden said: “Putin’s back is against the wall. He wasn’t anticipating the extent or the strength of our unity. And the more his back is against the wall, the greater the severity of the tactics he may employ.”
Mr Biden said the Kremlin’s playbook included “false-flag operations”, having accused America of running biological laboratories in Ukraine, raising fears that Mr Putin may be preparing the ground for the use of chemical or biological weapons by his troops.
“That’s a clear sign he is considering using both of those. He’s already used chemical weapons in the past, and we should be careful of what’s about to come. He knows there will be severe consequences because of the united Nato front, but the point is: It’s real,” Mr Biden emphasised.
In London, business minister Paul Scully, doing the morning media rounds for the Government, stated that any use of chemical or biological weapons by Russian forces in Ukraine would “undoubtedly” be a war crime.
Speaking on Sky News, he added: “This is Vladimir Putin’s war, the Kremlin’s war against Ukraine. It is not the Russian people’s. We have to make sure that we can appeal to the Russian people to bring an end to this.”
In their latest intelligence briefing, British defence chiefs said Ukrainian forces were “repulsing” Mr Putin’s attempts to seize the city of Mariupol despite “heavy fighting”, shelling and air strikes which have destroyed swathes of the city.
They said that Russian forces, on Day 27 of the invasion, were “largely stalled” in other parts of Ukraine, with one unconfirmed report putting the Russian military death toll already close to 10,000, citing defence sources in Moscow. In other key developments today:
Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky accused Mr Putin’s forces of blockading cities to create a “humanitarian catastrophe” with the aim of forcing people to surrender. He and civic chiefs in Mariupol rejected a 5am ultimatum yesterday for people to lay down their weapons and leave the city or face military tribunals.
Ukraine’s military warned of more indiscriminate Russian shelling on towns and cities from bogged-down Russian troops.
With children reported to be dying of dehydration in Mariupol, which has been cut off from water supplies and electricity, Ukraine’s deputy prime minister, Iryna Vereshchuk, pleaded with Russia to open humanitarian corridors out of the city.
She also said Russia’s armed forces were preventing humanitarian supplies reaching residents of the southern city of Kherson. Russia has repeatedly denied bombing civilian areas since invading Ukraine on February 24, a claim which flies in the face of the reality on the ground.
Russian war ships have started shelling the outskirts of Odesa, as part of an operation to cut Ukrainians off from the Black Sea.
The eastern city of Kharkiv was reported to have come under increased artillery fire overnight.
Civic chiefs in the Zaporizhzhia region said buses evacuating civilians from frontline areas were hit by shelling yesterday and four children were wounded.
In an address overnight, Mr Zelensky highlighted the death of Boris Romanchenko, a 96-year-old survivor of Nazi concentration camps, killed in his flat by shelling in Kharkiv. Mr Zelensky said: “He was killed by a Russian strike, which hit an ordinary Kharkiv multi-storey building. With each day of this war, it becomes more obvious what ‘denazification’ means to them.” Ukraine’s defence ministry said on Twitter that in killing Mr Romanchenko “Putin managed to ‘accomplish’ what even Hitler couldn’t.”
Mr Biden said only India among fellow Quad allies — the United States, Japan and Australia — had shown itself to be “somewhat shaky” in its response to Russia over the invasion of Ukraine.
Boris Johnson is “desperate” to visit Ukraine to “see what’s going on on the ground,” said Cabinet minister Oliver Dowden, but security officials are said to be concerned about any trip to Kyiv for talks with Mr Zelensky.
Mr Zelensky said Russian troops were preventing supplies from reaching surrounded cities in the centre and south-east of the country.
“This is a totally deliberate tactic,” he said in his night-time video address to the nation, filmed outside in Kyiv.
He said more than 9,000 people were able to leave besieged Mariupol in the past day, and in all more than 180,000 have been able to flee through humanitarian corridors.
Mr Biden is due to travel to Europe this week for meetings with allied leaders, including at a Nato summit in Brussels, to discuss even tighter sanctions on Russia.
