‘Putin playing game of smoke and mirrors as invasion stalls'

Keep punishing Putin to end horror of Ukraine war, says Truss

- Nicholas Cecil, David Bond and Will Stewart

VLADIMIR Putin will be forced to end his “barbaric" invasion if the West chokes off funding for his war machine and gives the Ukrainian resistance support, Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said today. The Cabinet minister laid out the strategy to "end this war" and stop the Russian president's massacre of civilians in Ukraine as the latest reports said his troops were suffering heavy losses, including possibly the death of another general.

Ms. Truss said unprecedented sanctions from the West were having a “debilitating effect on the Russian economy". Boris Johnson was in the Gulf today as part of moves to wean Europe off its dependence on Russian gas and oil.

Striking a note of optimism, even if only slight, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said peace talks with Russia had taken a "realistic turn".

But the horror of Mr. Putin's war continued on the 21st day of the invasion, with another block of flats in the capital Kyiv, which is under curfew, hit by Russian shelling, according to the Ukrainian authorities. Russian soldiers were reported to be keeping 400 people, including patients and medical staff, “like hostages" inside a hospital in the besieged city of Mariupol in southern Ukraine.

Fierce fighting was also taking place in the Luhansk eastern region and Russian maritime forces appeared to be preparing for a landing near Odesa.

Thousands of civilians are believed to have died so far in the conflict.