'It's too late': Russian move roils U.N. meeting on Ukraine
The Hindu
The U.N. Security Council has held an emergency meeting that was meant as an eleventh hour effort to dissuade Russia from sending troops into Ukraine
The emergency U.N. Security Council meeting was meant as an eleventh hour effort to dissuade Russia from sending troops into Ukraine. But the message became moot even as it was being delivered.
While diplomats at U.N. headquarters were making pleas for Russia to back off — “Give peace a chance,” Secretary-General Antonio Guterres implored — Russian President Vladimir Putin went on television in his homeland to announce a military operation that he said was intended to protect civilians in Ukraine.
Mr. Putin 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 on 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-an-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, Mr. 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, Mr. Kyslytsya said.