Editor’s Word: Michael Bociurkiw (@WorldAffairsPro) is a world affairs analyst. He’s a senior fellow on the Atlantic Council and a former spokesperson for the Group for Safety and Cooperation in Europe. He’s a daily contributor to CNN Opinion. The opinions expressed on this commentary are his personal. View extra opinion at CNN.

Lviv, Ukraine
CNN
 — 

In wartime, the thoughts performs unusual methods. On Wednesday night in Lviv, I used to be jolted awake by what I believed have been close by explosions. As a substitute, information alerts on my cellphone lit up with the unimaginable horror unfolding within the southern Ukrainian port metropolis of Mariupol.

A bomb had struck a hospital, destroying the maternity and youngsters’s wards. Grainy photographs and video confirmed an Armageddon-like scene: automobiles on fireplace, the surface grounds singed and a crater massive sufficient to accommodate two males head to toe. A dazed, bloodstained, pregnant lady was being led out by rescue staff.

Three folks died within the strike and greater than a dozen have been injured – amongst them youngsters, ladies and medical doctors. I feel again to 2014, when one other missile strike, that point fired by Russian-backed separatists in Donetsk, struck buildings and playgrounds in Mariupol, killing at the very least 30 folks and injuring 102. The faces of the traumatized youngsters we visited afterwards, flash by my thoughts once more.

I’ve labored in lots of advanced humanitarian emergencies earlier than, however that is totally different for me. These are my folks being injured and killed. I watch as massive swaths of the land of my ancestors, launched to me in childhood by Ukrainian people songs and poems as a bucolic land of freedom fighters and courageous dissidents, is being remodeled into killing fields. No marvel my goals preserve me in a captive state of despair.

Two weeks into the conflict, scenes of carnage like that of the Mariupol hospital have grow to be a part of the each day horror for Ukrainians that may’t be switched off.

And as of Wednesday, the United Nations stated that the civilian demise toll after 13 days of violence in Ukraine stood at 516. Of those, 37 are youngsters. Greater than 900 individuals are reported wounded.

The scenario in Ukraine is rising more and more dire and Western nations must do extra as an alternative of ready for situations to proceed deteriorating. Whereas the US and NATO needs to be cautious to keep away from escalating the conflict, world leaders must also be making ready for worst-case eventualities and setting non-negotiables to rein Putin in. The indiscriminate shelling of what are supposed to be secure havens for girls and youngsters must be established as a crimson line no thuggish regime needs to be allowed to cross.

Russian forces have already bombed what have been meant to be protected humanitarian corridors and launched strikes at considered one of Europe’s largest nuclear energy vegetation in Zaporizhzhia, in accordance with Ukrainian officers. In addition they used banned weapons akin to cluster bombs, NATO Secretary Basic Jans Stoltenberg stated Friday. In any case this, I’ve to ask: what extra do Putin’s forces must do to jolt the world’s conscience into motion? And if Ukrainian officers’ report of the bombing of a maternity and youngsters’s hospital doesn’t do it – is there any crimson line that would?

We’ve seen earlier than, moments in conflict that minimize by to folks past a nation’s ravaged borders. Photos so terrible that they sear into the worldwide public consciousness – and generally even drive motion from lawmakers. Just like the picture of drowned toddler, 3-year-old Alan Kurdi after he was photographed face down on a Turkish seashore in 2015, that triggered worldwide anguish and condemnation. And helped immediate then-Chancellor Angela Merkel to open Germany’s doorways to one million Syrian refugees.

What of the pictures rising from Mariupol in 2022? On Thursday, the Worldwide Committee of the Purple Cross warned that “lots of of 1000’s of individuals haven’t any meals, water, warmth, electrical energy, or medical care.” However maybe the world has grow to be numb to Putin’s acquainted techniques: demoralize a inhabitants by killing and wounding bizarre folks, a technique additionally utilized in Syria and Chechnya. Whereas there’s a multinational effort to supply weapons to Ukraine, Western leaders nonetheless appear to be repeating the identical bullet factors of condemnation, sanctions, embargoes and broad platitudes as an alternative of setting down new crimson traces for the Kremlin.

In France, authorities spokesperson Gabriel Attal referred to as Wednesday’s strike “inhumane,” “unjustifiable” and “cowardly.” To not be outdone, Canadian Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland, who’s in Europe together with her boss Justin Trudeau who has come underneath criticism for ready to ship deadly weaponry to Ukraine, said: “We’ve an excellent understanding of what the Ukrainians want.”

However communicate to bizarre Ukrainians and they’re shortly coming to the conclusion that what they want is greater than phrases. There’s a sense right here that they’re on this struggle alone – overlook about NATO delivering zakryty nebo (closed air house) and even facilitating the switch of Polish MiG fighter jets to the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Many say to me: ‘We’re prepared to die for our nation however why are we paying the final word worth with the lives of our males, ladies and even youngsters, with the intention to defend European safety?’

The desperation has come to the purpose the place one Kyiv mom, Oksana, who endured a harrowing 47-hour journey to a secure haven in western Ukraine texted me for assist in evacuating her solely son to the West. She wrote: “I’m very horrified and I’m in despair proper now. I’ve no peace. I cry each hour of day-after-day. I’m very drained. I’ve misplaced the which means of life. I urge you for assist.”

An Odessa mom, Katerina, tells me that whereas affords of western resettlement by nations akin to Canada and the UK are welcome, it simply isn’t a viable possibility for her. “I held on all lately and in the present day I can’t cease crying. There may be chaos in my head and I don’t know the best way to stay on. That is my residence. I go searching me and don’t understand how I can depart all of it … all my mates are at conflict now. If I depart, I’ll betray them … like I gave up and don’t imagine in them.”

John Shmorhun of the Ukrainian Schooling Platform, which helps resettle susceptible ladies and youngsters in secure havens in western Ukraine, advised me that with violence escalating, determined households within the east are being pressured to make heart-wrenching selections to ship their younger youngsters on dangerous evacuation convoys to the West. Some two weeks into the conflict, the dimensions of the dislocation is immense.

The trail out of that is unclear. Though sanctions and embargoes are biting Russia – to the purpose that the oligarchs in Mr Putin’s circle could also be pressured to trip in locations like North Korea or the resort constructed by the Chinese language on synthetic islands within the contested South China Sea – historical past exhibits Putin just isn’t one to maintain his guarantees on any substantive situation. In some instances, his regime is intentionally mendacity, with the intention to purchase him time do the precise reverse.

Russian forces have repeatedly struck civilian escape corridors, in accordance with Ukrainian officers, in what seems to be an effort to terrorize and obliterate Ukrainian civilians.

Certainly, in response to the strike on the Mariupol hospital, Russian Overseas Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova claimed — with out offering proof — that Ukrainian forces had “outfitted fight positions” throughout the hospital.

Western leaders will solely be spurred into motion – and assist unify Europe on coping with Russia – after they understand that after Putin achieves his navy targets in Ukraine, he’ll go additional. Certainly many in neighboring nations are nervously watching his subsequent transfer.

Putin has no obvious exit ramp now and appears to be daring NATO to enter the conflict with such statements that sanctions are equal to a declaration of conflict. As Latvian Protection Minister Artis Pabriks factors out, “If … the Kremlin want to struggle a conflict towards NATO or Europe, they might at all times discover a purpose.”

Therefore, officers at NATO ought to at the very least psychologically put together for a direct confrontation with Putin. Making ready for the worst is preferable to being pressured to take action afterward Putin’s phrases.