A few months ago I stood in a massive warehouse in the Turkish city of Gaziantep that sits on the border with Syria.

For some time now Gaziantep has become a conduit through which many Syrian refugees have passed in search of sanctuary after fleeing the war that grips their country

The warehouse in which I stood that day was administered by the aid agency Mercy Corps one of the biggest humanitarian organisations operating cross border in support of refugees and displaced civilians from the Syrian conflict.

Stacked on pallets and racks around me ready to be loaded on to a convoy of trucks were food rations, winterisation kits, blankets mattresses, kitchen sets, solar lanterns and clothes.

All these were destined for communities displaced from their homes inside Syria or struggling to survive in the ruins of northern cities like Aleppo that sits close to the frontier with Turkey.

As I watched the trucks being loaded, Dalia Al-Awqati, Director of Programmes in North Syria for Mercy Corps explained to me some of the nightmarish logistical problems and dangers aid workers faced in getting such supplies to those in need.

“This is material that helps support hundreds of thousands of people in Syria every month,” Al-Awqati told me.

“The provision of assistance in areas close to front lines is challenging if not impossible,” she continued, outlining how due to repetitive air strikes within short timeframes, civilians were uncertain about locations they should consider safe and those not, resulting in an increase of multiple displacements.

It easy to imagine how such a desperate and constantly changing situation is near impossible to contend with on a planning level.

But if things were bad enough last November then today they are so very much worse.

Upwards of 50,000 more Syrians have fled a recent escalation in fighting leaving aid agencies facing near insurmountable challenges.

In Mercy Corps case alone, intensified fighting and air strikes in and around Aleppo have cut off the main and most direct humanitarian route used to access the city.

Since last week the organisation’s operations in northern Syria have effectively been sliced in half.

To put this into some kind of human perspective it means that some half a million people reached by Mercy Corps every month are now even more vulnerable than before.

This deteriorating situation has come about in great part as a result of Russian air strikes that have helped Syrian government forces make major gains in Aleppo Province.

Given these territorial advances, it’s perhaps then not surprising that Russia has steadfastly opposed a US push for a ceasefire in Syria. Moscow it seems is more conducive to calling for a halt to hostilities on March 1, a date Washington suspects allows the Syrian army with Russian support three weeks to inflict irreversible losses on rebel forces.

Yesterday’s meeting of the International Syria Support Group in Munich brought together both allies and opponents of Syrian President Bashar al- Assad, including Russia, Iran, the US and Saudi Arabia.

While it was reported that US Secretary of State John Kerry wanted an immediate "all or nothing" ceasefire, Moscow was not for shifting its position.

All of this is bad news indeed for humanitarian agencies trying to respond to the massive number of Syrians fleeing the fighting. While the UN and the European Union (EU), have agreed a 3-billion-euro fund to improve conditions for refugees in Turkey and urged Ankara to open the border, Turkey’s President Tayyip Erdogan insists his country’s patience is running out over the refugee crisis.

"There is a chance the new wave of refugees will reach 600,000 if air strikes continue," Erdogan warned in a speech in Ankara, calling on the UN to prevent "ethnic cleansing" and warning Europe he could "open the gates" for refugees.

Such warnings of course are nothing new. For as if the plight of Syria’s refugees was not bad enough, the longer the war goes on the more they have become political pawns in the cynical super politicking that has become the hallmark of international efforts to find a solution to this crisis.

The bottom line here is that rather than deal with the problem of the refugee crisis at source, which is the war itself, the international community is left simply tackling the effects of its fallout.

Yesterday’s announcement that Nato ships are being deployed to the Aegean Sea to deter people-smugglers taking refugees from Turkey to Greece is a point in case. This latest move came as two suspected people-smugglers also went on trial in Turkey yesterday accused of causing the death of 3-year-old Alan Kurdi, whose drowned body washed up on a beach caused international outrage and put a human face on the Syrian refugee crisis.

That a crackdown of sorts has begun on the organised people-traffickers is both welcome and long overdue.

It will not however do much to stall the ever increasing number of Syrian refugees prepared to risk crossing the Aegean in the hope of a better life away from a war the UN and international community has failed miserably to stop.

As Russian warplanes intensify their efforts and Syrian forces close in on Aleppo, the current talks in Munich have become a defining moment as to whether the diplomatic process can continue in the short term.

"This meeting risks being endless and I fear the results will be extremely small,” was how one senior Western diplomat yesterday pessimistically summed up what might be achieved in Munich.

If his assessment is right then expect yet more innocent civilians to be caught in the crossfire and the refugees to continue coming.