Ruthless Putin 'knows no limit' and will indiscriminately carpet bomb Ukrainian cities, UK warns

Watch: Putin 'doesn't care' about Western sanctions as Ukraine invasion stretches into seventh day

Vladimir Putin doesn't care about sanctions being imposed on Russia and is prepared to escalate the offensive in the coming days with an increased bombing campaign, the UK has warned.

Putin is reportedly growing increasingly frustrated at the pace of the Ukraine invasion, which is now into its seventh day.

UK defence secretary Ben Wallace said the "ruthless" Russian president has “no limit” and will use indiscriminate carpet bombing against cities as his forces close in on the capital Kyiv and lay siege to urban areas.

The Russians have targeted built-up areas in Kyiv, Kharkiv, Mariupol and Chernihiv, but been met with fierce opposition from the Ukrainian armed forces as well as citizens, many of whom have taken up arms.

In Kyiv a missile strike on a TV Tower on Tuesday evening killed five people while a 40-mile-long convoy of soldiers is on its way towards the capital, though US officials have claimed it has made little progress in the past 24 hours, frozen in place by logistical and supply problems.

UK defence secretary Ben Wallace said Putin mistakenly believed Ukrainians would "welcome him as a liberator".

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He also warned that Putin "obviously doesn't really care" about sanctions, believing that the suffering of his people is a sign of leadership.

"When I went to Russia myself, the Russian Ministry of Defence were very clear that Russian people could suffer greater than other Europeans, we can't be harmed by sanctions.

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"I remember saying at one stage I actually don't want Russian people to suffer more than I want European and British people to suffer.

"I think there's definitely a sense of pride that Russian suffering equals leadership and I think he's about be shocked because it's the 21st century and Russian people just like European people don't want to go through what they're about to."

Watch: Russia gathering troops "closer and closer" to Kyiv

What are the sanctions the West has imposed on Russia?

Western nations have imposed widespread sanctions against Russia and people associated with Putin, locking him out of hundreds of billions of dollars

The rouble sank to an all-time low this week, causing the Russian central bank to more than double interest rates in an effort to keep it afloat, wreaking havoc on the Russian economy.

Here are some of the main sanctions brought in:

• A number of Russian banks have been cut out of the Swift international payment system, stopping their ability to operate worldwide.

• Russian airlines and private aircraft have been banned from the airspace of the EU, UK, Switzerland and US.

• The EU introduced a ban on exports of aircraft and aviation parts to Russia.

• Foreign assets of Putin, his foreign minister Sergei Lavrov and defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, have all been frozen in the UK, EU and US.

• EU brought in sanctions on all 351 members of Russia's parliament.

• Billionaire oligarchs with ties to Putin’s regime have been blocked around the world.

• The EU are considering a ban on Russian ships entering their ports, after similar moves by Canada and the UK.

Wallace warned that Russia will now intensify its campaign, with indiscriminate carpet bombing tactics and a scale of brutality that "is going to get worse".

He said Russian advances were being hampered by resistance they had seen but there had also been a switch in Moscow’s tactics as a result.

“What you are seeing now is those heavy bombardments at night, they won’t come into the cities as much, they will – I’m afraid, as we have seen tragically by the looks of things – carpet-bomb cities, indiscriminately in some cases," he said.

“They will fly their air at night rather daytime because what we have seen is they get shot down in the daytime and they will slowly but surely try and surround the cities and then either bypass them or bombard them.

“That is the brutality I’m afraid we are witnessing and it’s going to get worse.”

Ukrainians have come under sustained fire in recent days, usually undercover of darkness.

Putin has faced accusations of war crimes after cluster bombs were reportedly used in Kharkiv, with Ukrainian officials reporting 21 people dead following heavy shelling.

In the north-east of the country, a cluster bomb attack reportedly hit a pre-school.