Make Putin pay: Britain and Ukraine vow to pursue him for atrocities

BRITAIN and Ukraine today vowed a relentless pursuit of Vladimir Putin for his regime’s “barbaric atrocities” as the death toll from a missile strike on a restaurant rose to 12, including twin girls.

- Nicholas Cecil and Miriam Burrell

Foreign Secretary James Cleverly told the Standard that the Russian military’s “horrific tactics” will not “break the spirit of the Ukrainian people”.

His heartfelt words echoed an overnight address from Volodymyr Zelensky who said: “No matter what the occupiers try to do against us and no matter what kind of terror they use, they will not be able to break Ukraine.”

The missile strike on the crowded restaurant in Ukraine’s eastern city of Kramatorsk on Tuesday was the latest Russian attack on civilian areas of the war-torn country.

Twin sisters Anna and Yulia Aksenchenko, 14, were among the dead. They would have turned 15 in September, Kramatorsk city council’s education department said in a Facebook post under a picture of the two girls. More than 530 children have been killed in Ukraine since Putin launched his war in February last year, with at least 1,000 injured, according to UN monitors.

Ukraine’s prosecutor general’s office said an employee at a local gas transportation company helped Moscow target the restaurant by filming cars with military licence plates in its parking area and sending the footage to Russian special services.