Anyone who imagined that modern warfare would be a relatively clean affair involving drones, cyber attacks and rapid special forces strikes on military targets will have been disabused by the horrors unfolding in Ukraine. This is old-style brutality, in which any pretence at avoiding civilian casualties is rendered meaningless once bombs and missiles rain down on towns and cities. Moreover, it is not just the deaths and injuries that cause misery. As urban areas are encircled, all the necessities of normal life are cut off, from power and communications to food, water and medicines.

Within the space of a week, Ukraine has seen a mass exodus of refugees, and now those who have remained face calamity as Russian forces move to choke off resistance and force surrender terms on the government in Kyiv. The siege of Mariupol – a port town of some 400,000 people – is reminiscent of the Second World War, when it was often Russian cities like Leningrad and Stalingrad that stood against the aggressor.

Now, to the eternal shame of Vladimir Putin and his Kremlin cronies, it is the Russians carrying out the atrocities. Mariupol’s residents report a relentless barrage of shelling as efforts are made to control what is a key strategic target, the capture of which would allow Russian-backed rebels in eastern Ukraine to link up with Crimea, annexed in 2014. The aim seems to be to cut the country in two, at which point the Russian advance might stop. But in the meantime the privations suffered by the people are not something anyone expected to see in Europe in the 21st century.

It is, indeed, a deliberate strategy of occupiers to terrify and threaten the civilian population with starvation in order to bring about an end to resistance that has been far greater than Putin can have expected.

An agreement appears to have been reached for humanitarian corridors to allow civilians to escape the worst hit towns, but it remains to be seen if this will actually happen. The operation of delivering aid to the worst hit towns will not be safe without such an arrangement. 

Airlifts are out of the questions when no Nato country is prepared to take action that might lead to a direct confrontation with Russian forces, leading to a wider war.

The best that can be hoped for is that the Russian leadership, having earned the opprobrium of the world, can partly redeem itself by stopping this slaughter of the innocents.