Ukraine is now seeing the worst atrocities in Europe since the Second World War

Editorial: In some ways, the Third World War has already begun

A stuffed horse with bloodstains on it lies on a platform after Russian shelling at the railway station in Kramatorsk (AP)

A murderous attack using cluster bombs on a railway station, killing upwards of 30 refugees; 130 civilians kept in a stinking cellar, with the dead piled up in a corner; random shootings and rapes: the kinds of war crimes that Boris Johnson describes as being not “far short of genocide” are now routine in Ukraine.

Because of the scale of the war, it exceeds the horrors of the civil wars in the former Yugoslavia. Thus, these are the worst atrocities seen in Europe since the end of the Second World War.

In many ways, they seem even more senseless than might have been feared – even after witnessing the actions of Russian and Russian-backed forces in Chechnya, Georgia, Syria, and eastern Ukraine and Crimea in 2014. It is worth considering why Vladimir Putin’s soldiers are behaving in this way – and what might be the appropriate military response.