A pregnant woman and her unborn baby died. Putin must pay for this crime.

A pregnant woman and her unborn child have died after a Russian artillery assault last week destroyed a maternity and children's hospital in the southern Ukrainian city of Mariupol. 

The world came to know her and the baby she carried after an image went viral of the bloodied mother being carried out on a stretcher amid the surrounding destruction. Humanity prayed for their safety.  But they did not survive, and we still do know the mother's name.

I, too, have been a pregnant woman. Although I am one of the lucky ones; I have never known war.

The photograph was a jarring reminder that the worst is yet to come. Vladimir Putin will stop at nothing less than the destruction of the Ukrainian civilization. This is another genocide in Europe – the second since World War II. 

Days ago, a source in Ukraine, Illarion Pavliuk, a writer and filmmaker turned freedom fighter, sent Paste BN a dispatch from his War Diaries predicting exactly this. "They (are on) purpose bombing our hospitals, schools, kindergartens; they are destroying our towns. ... It is now the war for annihilation. They are trying to eliminate Ukraine and Ukrainians."

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Another source, freelance journalist Roman Romanov, warned of the same horrific possibility last week as he and his friend, Serhiy Zosimenko, rushed to evacuate children to a hospital in Italy. Serhiy has a local charity that supports families with children receiving cancer treatment in Chernihiv, Ukraine. That city has been heavily bombed, with missiles landing only 700 yards away from the children's hospital there. 

Last week, I contacted Ata Hindi, an attorney and expert in international criminal law. "The bombing of the children's hospital constitutes a war crime and a crime against humanity," he told me. "Both categories of crimes should be investigated and pursued. This is a directed attack against civilians that are undefended. Ukraine is not a state party to the Rome Statute (of the International Criminal Court), but Ukraine requested that the court exercise jurisdiction and the Prosecutor's Office accepted."

That may be the longtime legal consequence of Putin's actions, but what about the families who are now suffering? Will NATO look away as a genocide is perpetrated at its back door? It would be another unforgivable omission on the part of modern civilization. 

Russia must be stopped before it's too late. If Putin will bomb children's hospitals, if he will attack women waiting to give birth to the next generation of Ukrainians, he is capable of any atrocity. We turn a blind eye at our own peril. 

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Carli Pierson is an attorney, former professor of human rights, writer and member of Paste BN's Editorial Board. You can follow her on Twitter: @CarliPiersonEsq

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