This community in Sri Lanka’s Kandy District is a mass of mud and loss.

The narrow, filthy streets in Gampola are filled with broken furniture, sodden toys and soiled mattresses. A torrent of floodwater ripped through this neighbourhood and many people had no time to escape.

Trying to reach their now destroyed homes is like wading through treacle – the mud knee-deep.

Many locals say they were not warned about the threat Cyclone Ditwah posed here before it struck last Friday, and weren’t told to evacuate. They say they’ve received very little help since.

Resourceful neighbours were left to try to help rescue survivors. But some had to carry the bodies of the dead, too. Mohamed Fairoos was one of them.

“We took five bodies from here,” he says, gesturing to a house full of debris, where mattresses hang drying over the balcony.

“We took nine bodies in total and handed them over to the hospital.” He appears both shocked and exasperated at the lack of support this community received.

“When I took the bodies, the police, the navy, no one sent for us.” He tells me he even posted a video online appealing for boats, hoping it might help.

I ask him if he thinks the government has done enough. “No,” he says forcefully. “No one called for us. No one helped us. No one gave us any boats.”

Read more: Families count the cost of devastating floods

‘Five people were killed here’

Just a few doors down, a group of volunteers have come to clear another home filled with floodwater. “Five people were killed here,” one of them tells me.

Five of them came from one family: a mother, father, their two daughters and son. Kumudu Wijekon tells me she was friends with them and they’d fled here to a friend’s house, hoping to escape the threat.

“There was heavy rain, but they didn’t think there would be flooding. They left their own home to save themselves from landslides. If they had stayed, they would have survived.”

‘We don’t have a single rupee’

A short drive away, Chamilaka Dilrukshi is sobbing inside the photography studio she shares with her husband Ananda. They have two children aged four and 11.

Chamilaka is clutching a bag of rice – she says it’s been donated by a friend and it’s all they have to eat.

Everything in the shop is wrecked – expensive cameras and lighting equipment covered in thick layers of mud, and outside, rows of broken frames and ripped pictures.

They think they’ve lost nearly £2,500 and their home is severely damaged. She weeps as she tells us: “We don’t have a single rupee to start our business again. We spent all of our savings on trying to build our house.”

Like Mohamed, she believed they should have been warned. “We didn’t know anything. If we did, we would have taken our cameras and our computers out. We just didn’t know it was coming.”

Anger at government’s perceived failings

Sri Lankan president Anura Kumara Dissanayake has declared a state of emergency to deal with the aftermath of the cyclone, and international aid has arrived.

But many people are angry at the government’s perceived failings. It’s been criticised for not taking the warnings from meteorologists seriously two weeks before the cyclone made landfall, as well as for not communicating enough messages in the Tamil language.

It is going to take places like Gampola a long time to rebuild, repair and restore trust. And in a country still recovering from an economic collapse, nothing is guaranteed.

The Americans were given the full VIP treatment on their visit to Moscow. 

There was a motorcade from the airport, lunch at a Michelin-starred restaurant, and even a stroll around Red Square.

It felt like Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner were on more of a tourist trail than the path to peace.

They finally got down to business in the Kremlin more than six hours after arriving in Russia. And by that point, it was already clear that the one thing they had come to Moscow for wasn’t on offer: Russia’s agreement to their latest peace plan.

According to Vladimir Putin, it’s all Europe’s fault. While his guests were having lunch, he was busy accusing Ukraine’s allies of blocking the peace process by imposing demands that are unacceptable to Russia.

The Europeans, of course, would say it’s the other way round.

But where there was hostility to Europe, only hospitality to the Americans – part of Russia’s strategy to distance the US from its NATO allies, and bring them back to Moscow’s side.

Putin thinks he’s winning…

Russia wants to return to the 28-point plan that caved in to its demands. And it believes it has the right to because of what’s happening on the battlefield.

It’s no coincidence that on the eve of the US delegation’s visit to Moscow, Russia announced the apparent capture of Pokrovsk, a key strategic target in the Donetsk region.

It was a message designed to assert Russian dominance, and by extension, reinforce its demands rather than dilute them.

Read more:
Michael Clarke answers your Ukraine war questions
‘Thousands’ of Westerners applying to live in Russia

…and believes US-Russian interests are aligned

The other reason I think Vladimir Putin doesn’t feel the need to compromise is because he believes Moscow and Washington want the same thing: closer US-Russia relations, which can only come after the war is over.

It’s easy to see why. Time and again in this process, the US has defaulted to a position that favours Moscow. The way these negotiations are being conducted is merely the latest example.

With Kyiv, the Americans force the Ukrainians to come to them – first in Geneva, then Florida.

As for Moscow, it’s the other way around. Witkoff is happy to make the long overnight journey, and then endure the long wait ahead of any audience with Putin.

It all gives the impression that when it comes to Russia, the US prefers to placate rather than pressure.

According to the Kremlin, both Russia and the US have agreed not to disclose the details of yesterday’s talks in Moscow.

I doubt Volodymyr Zelenskyy is filled with hope.

The Americans were given the full VIP treatment on their visit to Moscow. 

There was a motorcade from the airport, lunch at a Michelin-starred restaurant, and even a stroll around Red Square.

It felt like Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner were on more of a tourist trail than the path to peace.

They finally got down to business in the Kremlin more than six hours after arriving in Russia. And by that point, it was already clear that the one thing they had come to Moscow for wasn’t on offer: Russia’s agreement to their latest peace plan.

According to Vladimir Putin, it’s all Europe’s fault. While his guests were having lunch, he was busy accusing Ukraine’s allies of blocking the peace process by imposing demands that are unacceptable to Russia.

The Europeans, of course, would say it’s the other way round.

But where there was hostility to Europe, only hospitality to the Americans – part of Russia’s strategy to distance the US from its NATO allies, and bring them back to Moscow’s side.

Putin thinks he’s winning…

Russia wants to return to the 28-point plan that caved in to its demands. And it believes it has the right to because of what’s happening on the battlefield.

It’s no coincidence that on the eve of the US delegation’s visit to Moscow, Russia announced the apparent capture of Pokrovsk, a key strategic target in the Donetsk region.

It was a message designed to assert Russian dominance, and by extension, reinforce its demands rather than dilute them.

Read more:
Michael Clarke answers your Ukraine war questions
‘Thousands’ of Westerners applying to live in Russia

…and believes US-Russian interests are aligned

The other reason I think Vladimir Putin doesn’t feel the need to compromise is because he believes Moscow and Washington want the same thing: closer US-Russia relations, which can only come after the war is over.

It’s easy to see why. Time and again in this process, the US has defaulted to a position that favours Moscow. The way these negotiations are being conducted is merely the latest example.

With Kyiv, the Americans force the Ukrainians to come to them – first in Geneva, then Florida.

As for Moscow, it’s the other way around. Witkoff is happy to make the long overnight journey, and then endure the long wait ahead of any audience with Putin.

It all gives the impression that when it comes to Russia, the US prefers to placate rather than pressure.

According to the Kremlin, both Russia and the US have agreed not to disclose the details of yesterday’s talks in Moscow.

I doubt Volodymyr Zelenskyy is filled with hope.