Irish Examiner View: Ultimately, Putin will pay the price

It is increasingly imperative that the world will hold Russian president Vladimir Putin and his cronies to account.

Russian president Vladimir Putin is happy to ignore the lives of millions in pursuit of his goals. Picture: Mikhail Metzel/AP

A day after Russia withdrew from the UK-brokered deal with guaranteed safe passage for ships from Ukraine’s Black Sea ports, igniting global food security concerns for the second time in its illegal war on a neighbouring country, Russian forces also unleashed the heaviest and most widespread wave of attacks on Ukrainian cities in a fortnight.

Pinpointing 18 targets in 10 cities, the Russian bombardment damaged more than a dozen critical infrastructure facilities and heaped more misery on millions of innocent civilians as sustained power outages and water shortages made their already perilous situation even worse.

The actions of Vladimir Putin’s regime in the last few days have — yet again — underscored the recklessness, barbarity, and careless disregard for civilian lives that has been front and centre of its actions since it attacked Ukraine last February.

And the regime’s justification for this latest attempt to cow Ukraine’s civilian population as well as possibly imposing starvation on millions of other innocents worldwide, was an attack by unknown forces — Ukraine has not claimed responsibility — on Russian naval bases in Sevastopol on Saturday.

The Kremlin says it is now too “dangerous” to take part in a deal which had indirectly prevented some 100m people from descending into extreme poverty. The indications are that the Russian government is only too willing to weaponise hunger in its increasingly febrile aggression.

This is obvious — and dangerous — territory, and it is increasingly imperative that the world will hold Putin and his cronies to account for their evermore desperate and vile actions. Not only has Putin misjudged the near-unanimous opposition to his contemptible war, but he has also underestimated the fortitude of the Ukrainian people.

Ultimately he will pay a price for those grave errors of judgement.