Isolated Putin is playing with nuclear annihilation

Even so, Moscow’s appetite for mayhem seems far from sated. Another near miss – the sixth since the invasion – has been narrowly averted at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station, Europe’s biggest.

Vladimir Putin seems as resolute as ever to ramping up the stakes in this lethal roulette.

Catastrophe was only avoided when the plant was reconnected to Ukraine’s energy grid and power restored. It had been knocked out by a Russian air raid. In the interim, diesel generators were deployed, otherwise a meltdown could have been caused by over-heating reactor fuel. Yet operators say they have only enough fuel for 10 days.

Alarm at the closeness of the shave was reflected in the stunned reaction from the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

“Each time we are rolling a dice. And if we allow this to continue time after time, then one day our luck will run out,” Rafael Grossi warned.

He has called for a commitment to protecting the safety of the plant, saying he was “astonished by the complacency” surrounding the successive strikes since the invasion began.”

The situation is becoming ever more desperate.

Moscow deployed a wave of ballistic hypersonic missiles that can travel at more than five times the speed of sound. The barrage hit cities from Kharkiv in the north to Odesa in the south.

Meanwhile, in the intensifying battle for the eastern city of Bakhmut, between 20,000 and 30,000 Russian troops have been killed or wounded since it began last summer, officials in the west have estimated. The Russian president’s penchant for miscalculating costs and over-estimating his military might is clocking up a grim human toll. The war he counted on lasting a few days has dragged into a second year.

He has irrevocably set his face away from Europe and is now utterly reliant on China. Washington has repeatedly warned that Beijing will soon provide him with the weapons he desperately needs to maintain the positions he holds.

As the war goes on, we cannot forget that people are dying in unknown numbers daily: the risks to millions more should not be discounted, given the utter disregard for life and safety.

The principle of civilised international relations – that one state cannot invade and subjugate another that has posed no threat – is now utterly shredded.

Putin keeps himself in a cocoon when it comes to taking advice; nonetheless, even he cannot be blind to the reality that the more he toys with nuclear annihilation, the more he deepens Russia’s international isolation. 

And the more he attempts to grind down Ukraine, the more he guarantees a greater surge of western weapons and resolve to aid Kyiv.