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.