Former New York Gov. George Pataki traveled to Ukraine this month on a humanitarian trip through his nonprofit Pataki Leadership Center. Working with the Greater New York Hospital Association, he brought three plane loads of medical supplies to Hungary for Ukrainian refugees. Pataki, who is now back home, joined Capital Tonight from his office in New York City.

“We were on both sides of the border,” he said. “On the Hungarian side of the border, it’s incredibly well-organized. They have medical care, they have food, they have shelter, they have transportation where they take people to places beyond the border like Budapest or Vienna or Prague or Italy.”

A visitor to the Ukraine side of the border faces a disturbing juxtaposition. While three million refugees have already escaped the country, millions are still attempting to leave.

“When we went across the border, we were in…a region that has a population of about 400,000 people,” Pataki said. “It has 500,000 refugees internally who either can’t or won’t leave Ukraine and they’re the ones who desperately need everything from medicine to food and certainly shelter.”

Pataki, who has family connections in Hungary, continued.

“We’re going to see a humanitarian crisis like hasn’t existed since the end of World War II," he said.

When asked why he believes the U.S. and NATO countries are not willing to help shut down Ukraine airspace, the former governor was clearly frustrated.

“I can’t explain Washington’s inaction,” Pataki said. “But you’re absolutely right. Every single person, Ukrainian women – and they weren’t men, they were women and children – when you asked ‘what do you need?' they said ‘close the sky.'"

According to the former governor, there are strategies that NATO could use to assist Ukraine without the West directly engaging Russia in the air.

“Poland has offered 28 MiG fighters, Soviet MiG fighters, that they would transfer to Ukraine for Ukrainian pilots. Other former Soviet countries like Slovakia have surface-to-air missiles so that they could shoot down the Russian planes, that they’re willing to give to the Ukrainians. These would be Ukrainian piloted armaments owned by Ukraine,” he said. “I understand we don’t want to get into a shooting war with Russia, who knows where that could lead, but this wouldn’t be that. This would be Ukrainians creating their own no-fly zone.”

It’s a risk, Pataki said, but one that’s worth it considering Putin’s current strategy.

“He’s gone into the phase where they just destroy everything,” he said. “When they cannot capture it, they destroy it.”