VLADIMIR Putin’s ruthless war machine bombed newborn babies yesterday — as the heartbreaking Ukrainian refugee exodus snowballed.
Infants in the eastern city of Dnipro were carried to a makeshift bomb shelter at a hospital to escape the Russian invasion.
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About a dozen, some only hours old, being looked after in the neonatal unit were rushed into a storage room in the basement to be cradled by brave nurses.
Dr Denis Surkov, 51, chief of the neonatal unit at Dnipropetrovsk Oblast Children’s Hospital said of the bunker: “This is the neonatal intensive care unit. In a bomb shelter. Can you imagine? This is our reality.’
Dnipro was among over a dozen cities and towns shelled as Russian forces also tightened their stranglehold on besieged capital Kyiv.
Ukraine’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Dmytro Kuleba accused Russian troops of “war crimes” as reports emerged of attacks on kindergartens and orphanages.
And on roads west towards the Polish border, the terrible human cost of deranged Putin’s war was laid bare as families were seen trying to escape the fighting.
At least 100,000 Ukrainians have fled the country — with up to five million more expected to also head towards bordering eastern European countries, including Hungary, Slovakia and Romania.
But President Volodymyr Zelenskyy made an order on Thursday that all men aged 18 to 60 are to be conscripted into the army.
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And one witness said he watched in horror as Ukrainian troops pulled sons and fathers from cars in front of their terrified families.
The Sun joined thousands fleeing for their lives as intense fighting raged five miles north in Kyiv’s Obolon suburb, where at least one Russian soldier was reported killed by civilian defenders.
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Distant artillery and missile fire intensified as we watched a tearful mum thumbing a lift while clutching her young son’s hand and wheeling a suitcase.
It took our team more than three hours to travel five miles surrounded by desperate locals in cars crammed with bewildered children, pets and belongings.
As the booms of the Russian offensive grew louder, a green Ukrainian army truck appeared bumping and clanking along the hard shoulder as it roared away from the front line.
Its front windscreen and tyres had been shot out, leaving the bare metal of its wheels screeching along the road.
But all along the main highway west on the outskirts of Kyiv, we saw signs of brave defenders preparing to take on the might of Putin’s invasion force.
They were set to be hopelessly outgunned in the coming hours as the Russian tyrant’s elite Spetsnaz troops spearhead the final push to decapitate Ukraine’s democracy.
Yet they were clearly standing firm and ready to fight with rifles and grenade launchers from behind makeshift sandbag fortifications.
A formation of four armoured personnel carriers flying Ukraine’s yellow and blue flags, with heavily armed troops aboard, raced to defend Kyiv’s western flank. Refugees honked car horns in salute.
Six miles west of the strife-torn city centre, hundreds of teenagers walked in line towards the fighting in civilian clothes, carrying backpacks and sleeping bags.
CALL TO ARMS
The youngsters — many looking as young as 16 — appeared to be raw recruits answering their country’s call to arms.
As dawn broke yesterday, gunfire had been heard in the government quarter of central Kyiv amid fears of a Russian agents’ sabotage and assassination mission.
The centre of Kyiv and its iconic Independence Square were eerily deserted save for small columns of Ukrainian army trucks.
Uniformed troops were joined by locals in jeans and trainers as embattled President Zelenskyy’s call to arms was heeded.
Ukraine’s defence ministry urged citizens to make “Molotov cocktail” petrol bombs in a last desperate defence of the capital.
More than 10,000 assault rifles have been handed out to residents, while many more defended their homes and families with hunting rifles and shotguns.
Ukrainian sources said they expected the capital would be surrounded within the next four days — yet vowed to fight on.
But analysts believed it could be hours before Putin’s overwhelming firepower crushed resistance in the capital in a bloodbath unseen in Europe since World War Two.
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Further west, as the sun set on another day of carnage, we saw a squadron of Ukrainian T-72 tanks under camouflage netting, preparing to repel an inevitable onslaught.
Meanwhile up to a million terrified refugees were desperately dashing from the outgunned country — but officials warned that could top five million.
A witness to the exodus on the Polish border said: “Women and children are heading to the safe zones while the men stay behind to fight to protect their homes.”
But another at the Hungary frontier said: “No one wants to get conscripted. No one wants to die.”
US visitor Manny Marotta, 25, who walked more than 43 miles to the Polish border, said: “There were essentially conscription units pulling every man between the age of 18 and 60 from his family.
“Sons were taken from their mothers as they tried to make it to safety. It was harrowing to see.” Meanwhile, a Ukrainian BBC journalist had to watch footage of her family home being bombed while she was on air.
Olga Malchevska was on BBC World News when images of blitzed flats were shown on screen. She said: ‘That footage is literally my home. People there were evacuated into the school.”
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