Russia has launched a fresh assault on the besieged city of Mariupol less than a day after the brutal bombing of a maternity hospital.
It comes after Russia and Ukraine's foreign ministers failed to agree on a ceasefire overnight and there's been no movement on a humanitarian corridor out of Mariupol either.
It's left the city's remaining residents desperate for support with food, water and medicines fast running out.
Russia has also expanded its offensive, attacking the cities of Lutsk, Ivano-Frankivsk and Dnipro.
As Russian forces edge closer to Kyiv how will this war end?
Ukraine President Volodymr Zelensky says the world has stood by and done nothing.
Former NATO Commander General Wesley Clark told Checkpoint it is shocking that the world is permitting the war in Ukraine to continue.
"We're letting Russia lay siege to city after city, wanton destruction, horrible humanitarian catastrophe and the UN is not acting and the UN must act in cases like this."
The aftermath of this week's attack on a children's and maternity hospital in Mariupol. Photo: AFP / Ukraine Armed Forces / Eyepress News
He is adamant it is not up to NATO to resolve the crisis, instead he said the United Nations should exclude Russia from the Security Council, impose a safe area on every one of the cities that have been attacked, get the Russians out of the country, and make them pay for their widespread destruction.
"You tell them to leave and if everybody in the United Nations said that to them, they would either leave or be at war with the United Nations."
The precedent has been set with the uniting for peace resolution, used during the Korean War in 1950.
At the behest of the UN, many countries helped South Korea defend itself during its war with North Korea, Clark said.
It would be total hypocrisy to allow Russia to remain in the Security Council given the principle of a rules-based international system.
If Russia refused to back down, the UN would effectively be at war starting with these measures: "It looks like a complete boycott of all Russian oil exports. It looks like a complete block of all Russian shipping. It looks like the internment of Russian military personnel wherever they are in the world. It looks like the end of Russian commercial air transportation. So that's where it starts."
If necessary, Russian fighter jets would also need to be shot down.
If Putin threatened to use nuclear weapons, he must be resisted. Otherwise, he will be free to destroy Ukraine and move on to Poland while China would be encouraged to take Taiwan, Clark said.
"We should surrender the world? I don't think so.
"This is a 1939 moment. When Hitler began his aggression in the Rhineland by occupying it in 1935, the German generals told Hitler, don't do this; the British and French will certainly enforce the Treaty of Versailles.
"Well, the British and French looked the other way and Hitler turned to his generals, and said who knows more - me or you?
"Putin has developed over 12 years a plan. He's built a Russian military for this plan. And this is the crucial test of his plan. If he succeeds here he will implement the same play in other battlefields."
Russian President Vladimir Putin Photo: AFP
His ultimate ambition was the destruction of NATO, the occupation of Eastern Europe and the overturning of the rules based international system in conjunction with Russia's major ally, China.
Clark believes United Nations blue-helmeted forces should be moved into Ukraine immediately, insist that Russian troops lay down their arms or face the consequences.
"The whole world needs to come together and defend the system. Putin is wrong, but you can't allow a man like an Adolf Hitler to get away with it. Yes, war is a shocking thing, but it's better to stop it before it gets larger than allow it to grow."
He also wants pressure brought to bear on those countries that have not taken a stand at the UN against Russia, including India and some in the Middle East and Africa so that the world can present a united front.
"This is about the defence of international law and the rules based international system. It's about the peaceful settlement of disputes.
"Mr Putin has no right to invade a sovereign country and I think it starts with asking him to leave, then demanding that he leave, then imposing the sanctions that require it, and then executing the peacekeeping humanitarian missions that are required to save Ukrainians and Ukraine from destruction by Russia."
The square outside the damaged local city hall in Kharkiv on 1 March 2022. Photo: AFP
