As members of UN security council poured out calls for restraint, Russian president was already launching attack on Ukraine
It will go down as one of the most surreal sessions the
The secretary general, Antonio Guterres, was the first to speak, and at that time Putin’s intentions were not entirely clear. But Guterres pointed to the reports of troops moving into position, and did something notable and rare for a UN secretary general: he publicly called out the head of a security council permanent member.
“You have a smartphone,” he said, taunting the Russian to check with his boss, the foreign minister, on what was really going on. “You can call Lavrov right now. We can make a pause to let you go out and call him.” An hour or so into the meeting, the multiplying reports of bombardment of Ukrainian cities had reached the chamber, and if the futility of the council’s calls for peace and dialogue had not been clear before, they were now agonisingly obvious.“At the exact time as we were gathered in the council seeking peace, Putin delivered a message of war in total disdain for the responsibility of this council,” said the US permanent representative, Linda Thomas-Greenfield. “This is a grave emergency.
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