If the Russians were on the verge of taking full control of the Ukrainian city of Mariupol after weeks of fighting, the plight they were inflicting on the population convinced the West to increase sanctions against the Kremlin.

This is what the French newspaper (Liberation) said in its editorial for this day, stressing that the fall of this city has become a matter of days, if not hours.

It is true - the newspaper says - that this city is of great strategic importance for Russia, as controlling it means securing a kind of territorial contiguity between the Crimea and the regions occupied by pro-Russian Ukrainian dissidents in the Donbass region.

For this - Liberation adds - the logic says that the fall of this city in the hands of the Russians is a victory for Russia, but the reality is different from that. This city's ability to resist has highlighted Russia's military weakness and enshrined this city as a heroic symbol of this absurd war, in the words of the newspaper.

She added that the resistance of Mariupol, despite the violence of the bombings, which gradually turned it into a state of ruin, aroused the feelings of Westerners and pushed them to tighten their penalties and intensify their shipments of weapons to Kyiv.

Logic says that the fall of Mariupol in the hands of the Russians is a victory for Russia, but the reality is different

If Russian President Vladimir Putin thought he could effortlessly crush the Ukrainian resistance under the helpless and even indifferent eyes of Europeans, quite the opposite has happened, according to Liberation.

The newspaper pointed out that it is to the point that it is no longer a fantasy to see - sooner or later - the recent decree imposing an embargo on Russian oil and gas, as this is the only initiative that is likely to truly weaken the Kremlin.

Also, this matter prompted the Americans to agree to Kyiv's demands to enhance the capabilities of its air fleet, which was not acceptable at all at the beginning of the war. Rather, it made the Finns and Swedes now studying with great interest the possibility of joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and made the President Ukrainian Volodymyr Zelensky is praised in all Western capitals, while his Russian counterpart is seen as a pariah.

Zelensky allowed himself to interfere in the French election campaign, revealing in a television interview his frank preference for Emmanuel Macron over his opponent, hoping to maintain the "cord of friendship" between them, the rope that Putin had succeeded in strengthening between Ukraine and the West, as the newspaper put it.