Offensive to help Putin mark May 9

He'll boast of land corridor on victory day, predicts former top UK general

- Nicholas Cecil

VLADIMIR PUTIN has thrown his forces into fierce battles in a steel plant to fully capture Mariupol so he can claim a victory by May 9, the ex-head of the British army said today.

Russian troops were said to have entered the vast Azovstal steel mill in the besieged port city where around 2,000 Ukrainian fighters, as well as 200 civilians including children, are reported to be inside an underground labyrinth of bunkers and corridors.

Two weeks ago, the Russian president stopped the attack on the plant, the last redoubt of Ukrainian fighters in the largely destroyed city, and ordered his generals to instead surround it so not even a "fly" could get in.

But Lord Dannatt, former head of the British Army, told Sky News this morning: “They have now come to the conclusion that they have got to have some form of victory to celebrate on Monday.

“It would appear that they have now resumed a direct attack on the steelworks in order to try to snuff out the remaining part of the resistance there so that they can claim on Monday that they have captured Mariupol and therefore they have completed their land corridor from Crimea through the Donbas into Russia proper.”