Andrew Bolt: No peace possible with Russian leader Vladimir Putin

Ukrainian troops are gaining back territory, and what the Russians have left behind is depraved and should make us question dropping sanctions.

Making peace with Russia’s vicious president, Vladimir Putin, has just become almost impossible.

The reason: his retreating army in Ukraine has left behind the bodies.

I’ve seen the videos and pictures so you don’t have to.

What they show the world suggests Putin is a war criminal who must stand trial in The Hague – or be shot dead by his own people – if we’re going to drop all the sanctions on Russia.

Ukrainian troops have now chased the Russian invaders out of dozens of towns, especially around the capital Kyiv, and what the Russians have left behind is depraved.

In Bucha, for instance, video shot by journalists and others show the bodies of dozens of civilians littering the streets.

By the side of one building, another seven civilians lie dead, one with his hands tied behind his back.

In a well is slumped another corpse.

Next to a factory lie the bodies of three more civilians, including another man with his hands tied, and seemingly shot in the head.

The atrocities are so widespread and the reports so persistent, that it is impossible to believe Putin didn’t know what was going on within his own army.

I’ve also seen a dead man with his feet still tangled in the bicycle he was riding, and in Motyzhyn, a mass grave of civilians with three faces of the dead showing through the sand.

These and other pictures are just from some of the liberated towns.

We’re yet to find exactly what was done in cities such as Mariupol.

But the photographed evidence already confirms what Ukrainian intelligence recorded and released – intercepted calls by Russian soldiers telling relatives of raping and killing civilians, and looting their homes.

Then there are the reports from Ukrainian women of being raped, and video showing Russians shooting civilians trying to flee.

The atrocities are so widespread and the reports so persistent, that it is impossible to believe Putin didn’t know what was going on or try to stop it.

As the Russian forces retreat further, more evidence will be found, and the world leaders who were forced by public outrage to slap sanctions on Russia will not be allowed to remove them anytime soon.

Some leaders or their advisers dare now suggest Ukraine could make peace with Russia by offering concessions, such as giving Russia some Ukrainian territory, while the West then drops sanctions to allow Russian oil and gas to flow freely again.

But how could Ukraine concede anything after seeing all these bodies of their people?

How could the West make deals again with Putin, the monster?

This war isn’t over at all.