'It's too late': Russian move roils UN meeting on Ukraine
An emergency UN Security Council meeting that was meant as an effort to de-escalate the situation became moot as it was delivered.
Russian President Vladimir Putin went on Russian television to announce a military operation meant to protect civilians in Ukraine.
He warned other countries that any effort to interfere with the Russian operation would lead to “consequences they have never seen.”
The council, where Russia holds the rotating presidency this month, gathered Wednesday night hours after Russia said rebels in eastern Ukraine had asked Moscow for military assistance. Fears that Russia was laying the groundwork for war bore out about a half hour later.
“It's too late, my dear colleagues, to speak about de-escalation,” Ukrainian Ambassador Sergiy Kyslytsya told the council. “I call on every one of you to do everything possible to stop the war.”
In a spontaneous exchange not often seen in the council chamber, Kyslytsya challenged his Russian counterpart to say that his country wasn't at that very moment bombing and shelling Ukraine or moving troops into it.
“You have a smartphone. You can call” officials in Moscow, Kyslytsya said.
“I have already said all I know at this point," Russian Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia responded.
He added that he didn't plan to wake up Russia's foreign minister — and said that what was happening was not a war but a “special military operation.”
Kyslytsya dismissed that description outside the meeting as “lunatic semantics.”
At the council's second emergency meeting this week on Ukraine, members found themselves delivering prepared speeches that were instantly outdated. Some ultimately reacted in a second round of hastily added remarks.
“At the exact time as we are gathered in the council seeking
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