Yesterday, Vladimir Putin’s ruthless war machine reached horrifying new depths by razing a school.

When the structure was attacked by thermobaric TOS-1A rockets, which can melt human organs, over 400 civilians were inside.

The exact number of casualties was unknown last night, but rescuers reported people were still trapped.

The art school was the latest civilian victim in the key port city of Mariupol’s unrelenting shelling.

Even though it was plainly designated with the word “children” in bold Russian writing visible from the air, a theatre there that was being used as a refuge by families was destroyed just last week.

The search for up to 1,300 people continues, but food and water supplies both inside and outside the damaged structure are critically low.

A maternity hospital in the city was targeted by another airstrike.

Yesterday, President Volodymyr Zelensky claimed that the residents of the port were being killed in a terrible war crime.

He added: “To do this to a peaceful city is a terror that will be remembered for centuries to come.”

According to local authorities, the siege has killed at least 2,300 people, with some having to be buried in mass graves because funerals were impossible due to continual shelling.

Russian forces have advanced farther into the shattered city, where fierce combat has forced the closure of a key steel production and residents have called for additional Western assistance.

Mariupol police officer Michail Vershnin, speaking from the ruins of a once-bustling boulevard, said: “Children, elderly people are dying. The city is destroyed and it is wiped off the face of the Earth.”

There were claims that Russian troops shelled an elderly people’s home in the tiny city of Kreminna, inside the breakaway pro-Russian enclave of Luhansk, killing 56 people.

The military then allegedly kidnapped 15 survivors and transported them 25 kilometres north to Svatove.

The terrible attack occurred on March 11 but was only recently reported due to Ukrainian officials’ inability to approach the care home.

Meanwhile, a Kremlin missile hit a block of flats near a nursery and school in Sviatoshyn, near Kyiv, yesterday, injuring five people.

Mr Zelensky stated that peace talks with Russia were necessary, despite the fact that they would be “not easy and pleasant.”

He further warned that if they fail, it might lead to “World War Three.”

He said: “Ukraine has always sought a peaceful solution.

“Moreover, we are interested in peace now.”

Last night, it was reported that Putin, shaken by the resistance in Ukraine, had “finally agreed” to meet Mr Zelensky in person.

The only negotiations that have taken place so far have been between middlemen on neutral ground.

With the fight now in its fourth week, Mr Zelensky claimed that Russia’s military was no longer even attempting to recover the dead of its soldiers.

He added: “In places where there were especially fierce battles, the bodies of Russian soldiers simply pile up along our line of defence.

“And no one is collecting these bodies.” He said Russia just kept “sending their people to slaughter” in a battle near Chornobayivka in the south.

Six times, Ukrainian forces have maintained their ground and repelled the attackers.

Mariupol remains a primary Putin target, and its capture would provide the Russians with a much-needed big battlefield advance, since they are currently stranded outside of major cities.

Its capture, as well as that of other port cities, would aid the dictator in gaining control of the strategically vital Black Sea coast.

In three prongs, he could put pressure on central Ukraine and march soldiers northward to Kyiv.

It would also clear the way for a Russian corridor to the east, near the Federation’s border, in Donetsk and Luhansk.

Moscow just recently recognised these two areas as separate entities.

Both are in Ukraine’s Donbas area, which has seen a separatist movement backed by Russia since 2014, when Putin’s soldiers annexed Crimea.

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