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In the wake of what the Nato secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, described as Russias fully fledged invasion of Ukraine, the west has to decide how to respond to what Frances Emmanuel Macron has called a turning point in European history.

Yet can the west now offer Ukraine more than a mixture of prayers, sanctions and diplomatic demarches? Throughout this conflict western intelligence has shown it has been able to predict Putins next step, but less capable of stopping it. Boris Johnson told the Ukrainian people we are with you, but what this western solidarity means in practice is now up for debate.

The 30-nation Nato alliance will stick to its pledge that it will never send forces to protect Ukraine as a non-Nato member. Backbench Tory calls to give Ukraine air support have no support in Nato.

Instead the west will test Russias resolve through tough sanctions and by some countries providing arms if there is a resistance.

The coordinated sanctions in Washington, London, Berlin and Brussels being announced on Thursday are billed as massive, but Putin sits on a $600bn (450bn) war chest and will benefit from oil prices soaring past $100 a barrel. That makes him less dependent on the west to raise capital than five years ago, and such is his dominance of the Russian media that the chances of internal protests pressurising, let alone toppling, the 69-year-old president look minimal. The oligarchs may complain if sanctions are placed on them, but Putin is in too deep to retreat.

One London-based diplomat said this week after viewing Russias televised and cowed national security meeting: We used to talk about Putins inner circle. There is no inner circle. There is only Putin. Another said: The only thing that will change Russian public opinion is the mothers of Russia seeing the bodybags.

Nikolai Petrov from the Chatham House thinktank warned all infrastructure of political opponents and opposition has been destroyed, making it much easier for the Kremlin to to mobilise public opinion.

Dire predictions by the British of Putin being mired in a battlefield quagmire will now be tested. Many Ukrainians appear on western media to attest that Putin has underestimated Ukraines will to fight. They insist they will not tolerate a puppet government loyal to Moscow. But the long queues of traffic fleeing Kyiv in the westward direction speaks to another story. It is as likely that Ukraines prisons will be filled with dissidents.

In the short term there will be a debate, including in Germany, about whether to arm the resistance, with some Green party and CDU leaders already advocating this.

The German foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, at the weekend said this was not the moment for Germany to make a 180-degree turn on such a strategic policy. Yet the debate is live. The former German defence minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer said: Im so angry at us for historically failing. After Georgia, Crimea and Donbas, we have not prepared anything that would have really deterred Putin.

Keir Giles, also from Chatham House, urged the west to be cautious. Looking at Russias 100% success record on suppressing resistance movements in territories it has occupied often using medieval levels of savagery and inflicting terror on the civilian population we ask what would aid to a resistance achieve and would it make the situation better worse or better. The images of destruction in Aleppo, Grozny and Afghanistan show how merciless the Russian military can be.

Stoltenberg has said that it is a matter for individual nations to decide the help they provide to any resistance. But the risks are high. In his speech announcing the invasion, Putin warned outsiders tempted to interfere that there would be consequences you have never encountered in your history a chilling veiled reference to nuclear war.

There is also a danger that an insurgency would exacerbate a refugee crisis likely to be triggered across central Europe.

Plans are in infancy in the EUs Frontex border agency to prepare for the arrival of hundreds of thousands of refugees. Some diplomats are optimistic that, unlike with Syria in 2015, there will not be a political backlash, pointing out many Ukrainians have already been welcomed to Europe. As many as 15,000 Ukrainians already live in Berlin. But autocrats have learned that refugees are weapons of war.

The British foreign secretary, Liz Truss, has clearly indicated that there is a serious risk that Putin, judging by his words, will not stop at Ukraine, but wants to restore Russias empire, and remove western forces from all former Warsaw pact countries.

Ben Wallace, the defence secretary, said Putin had gone full tonto, and almost every western politician who returned from Moscow was disturbed by his demeanour and inability to focus on realistic solutions to the crisis.

It means once Ukraine is swallowed by Putin, Russia will be able to station forces land, air and missile in bases in western Ukraine as well as Belarus, which has effectively lost independence.

He may not invade the Baltic states, but he is in a better strategic position to demand a retreat by Nato to Warsaw pact boundaries and a land corridor through Poland to link Kaliningrad, the headquarters of the Russian Baltic fleet.

It will mean high defence spending, less dependence on Russian energy and more troops on Natos frontiers. Finland and Sweden may seek to join Nato. If Putin wanted less Nato, he may get more.

Finally, the west has to confront questions about the validity of the whole postwar diplomatic security architecture.

On Wednesday night UN diplomats gathered to condemn Russia at an emergency meeting, one chaired by Russia, this months presidents of the UN security council. It symbolised the degree to which the UN has become utterly compromised. But there may have been one diplomatic voice in New York that will disturb the west most that of the Chinese envoy. In his brief remarks he remained studiously on the fence, refusing to condemn Russia and knowing the wests anguish may provide it with nothing but opportunities ahead.

Continued here:
What can the west do about Russia invading Ukraine? - The Guardian

BRUSSELS A new front line of conflict is taking shape in Europe, with enhanced levels of risk that raise questions about whether NATO will, or even can, respond effectively.

Having invaded Ukraine and deployed its troops in a compliant Belarus, Russia has suddenly extended its military power to the borders of several NATO countries, including the Baltic nations.

If Russia succeeds in taking over Ukraine and keeping bases in Belarus, as many experts now expect, its forces will extend from the borders of the Baltics and Poland to Slovakia, Hungary and northern Romania, making it significantly harder for NATO to defend its eastern flank.

And only a thin corridor some 60 miles long between Lithuania and Poland separates Russian forces in Belarus from Kaliningrad, the Russian territory on the Baltic Sea that is stuffed with missiles easily capable of flinging conventional or nuclear warheads into the heart of Europe.

The level of risk for NATO has simply and suddenly increased enormously, said Ian Lesser, a former American official who heads the Brussels office of the German Marshall Fund. The possibility of conflict with Russian forces in Europe or elsewhere, like the Black Sea, the Sahel, Libya or Syria, could be dangerous and will be an issue for years to come.

This changes everything for NATO, said Ian Bond, a former British diplomat who heads foreign policy at the Center for European Reform. Russias aim is to extinguish Ukraine as a sovereign country in Europe. Now we need to worry about everything, and we need to get serious again.

NATO has already responded in a small way to the Russian buildup, sending some extra troops and aircraft into member states closest to Russia. On Thursday, NATO decided on further, unspecified deployments, and there are serious discussions about finally scrapping the 1997 NATO-Russia Founding Act, which put limits on NATO deployments in the eastern members and which Russia violated eight years ago, when it invaded Ukraine and annexed Crimea.

Russias actions pose a serious threat to Euro-Atlantic security, and they will have geostrategic consequences, said the NATO Secretary-General, Jens Stoltenberg. We are deploying additional defensive land and air forces to the eastern part of the alliance, as well as additional maritime assets.

Any discussions with Moscow about redrawing Europes security architecture take on a different cast with Russian troops deployed on NATOs eastern flank.

Even if military spending goes up considerably in response to the new Russian invasion, as it did modestly after Russia took Crimea, new and permanent deployments of forces, equipment, planes and even missiles will be a major blow to the last 30 years of relative peace, prosperity and complacency in the alliance.

NATO had been focused on all these important and fashionable things with little to do with its core responsibility, like climate and cyber, Mr. Lesser said. But we forgot that there are ruthless people out there and for them, foreign policy is a blood sport.

NATO was already rewriting its 12-year-old strategic concept and debating a replacement for Mr. Stoltenberg, who leaves office on Oct. 1. Now, those tasks become ever more pressing. NATO is already in a mode to think more broadly about its purpose, Mr. Lesser said.

But a serious effort to deter a newly aggressive Russia will not be so simple, said Benjamin Hodges, the former commander of U.S. forces in Europe, now with the Center for European Policy Analysis. Just moving troops and equipment around in a post-Cold War Europe has become far more cumbersome, with some bridges and railways no longer able to handle heavy armor.

Political leaders will be surprised at how long it takes to move stuff given E.U. road regulations and without special priority on the German rail system, Mr. Hodges said.

NATO also lacks significant air and missile defenses for a modern air war that, as in Ukraine, starts by hitting significant infrastructure like airports, roads and rail, he said. Just to protect the large American air base at Ramstein, in southwestern Germany, would take an entire battalion of Patriot missiles, he said, and we have only one Patriot battalion in Europe thats ours.

Feb. 24, 2022, 6:00 p.m. ET

Once the Fulda Gap in Germany was a worry of Cold War strategists, heavily defended by American troops to prevent the Warsaw Pact from rushing tanks from East Germany to the Rhine River. Now, the concern is the Suwalki Corridor, a narrow gap that connects Poland to Lithuania that, if captured, would cut off the three Baltic nations from the rest of NATO.

The corridor separates Belarus from Kaliningrad, headquarters of the Russian Baltic Fleet and isolated from Russia when the Soviet Union imploded. An emboldened Mr. Putin might very well demand direct access from Belarus to Kaliningrad, suggested Robert Kagan of the Brookings Institution in a column for the Washington Post.

But even that would be just one piece of what is sure to be a new Russian strategy to delink the Baltics from NATO by demonstrating that the alliance can no longer hope to protect these countries, he wrote.

The threat now to Poland becomes acute, said Mr. Bond, recommending that the United States quickly put two heavy battalions in Poland for a start. The deployments in the three Baltic states also need to be beefed up, he said.

In 2016, NATO agreed to put battalions in Poland and the Baltic nations for the first time. Known as an enhanced forward presence, they consist of about 1,100 soldiers each, combat ready but small, more like tripwires than anything that could slow down a Russian advance for very long.

In 2014, NATO also established a very high readiness joint task force, currently under the command of Turkey, that is supposed to deploy at short notice against threats to NATO sovereignty. It consists of a land brigade numbering around 5,000 troops, supported by air, sea and special forces, with more reinforcements able to be deployed within 30 days.

But the smaller force is essentially untested, and the larger Response Force of which it is the spearhead is only a quarter the size of the Russian invasion force into Ukraine. The larger force was created in 2002 and was meant to be rapidly deployable, but its 40,000 members are based in their home countries and gathering them can be a slow exercise.

What is at the root of this invasion? Russia considers Ukraine within its natural sphere of influence, and it has grown unnerved at Ukraines closeness with the West and the prospect that the country might join NATO or the European Union. While Ukraine is part of neither, it receives financial and military aid from the United States and Europe.

Are these tensions just starting now? Antagonism between the two nations has been simmeringsince 2014, when the Russian military crossed into Ukrainian territory, after an uprising in Ukraine replaced their Russia-friendly president with a pro-Western government. Then, Russia annexed Crimeaand inspired a separatist movement in the east.A cease-fire was negotiated in 2015, but fighting has continued.

How has Ukraine responded? On Feb. 23, Ukraine declared a 30-day state of emergencyas cyberattacks knocked out government institutions. Following the beginning of the attacks, Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraines president, declared martial law. The foreign minister called the attacks a full-scale invasion and called on the world to stop Putin.

There are also questions about the vow of NATO members to send weapons to Ukraine as it fights the Russians or to help mount an insurgency. Efforts to supply arms to Ukraine by air, rail or road could be intercepted or obstructed by the Russian military, Mr. Hodges said, even if the shipments are delivered by contractors and not NATO soldiers.

And what country is going to dare support an insurgency knowing that the Russian military is on the other side of the border?

In general the chance of accidental confrontations leading to escalation cannot be ruled out in such a tense atmosphere. Analysts point to the way Turkey shot down a Russian fighter plane near the Syria-Turkey border in 2015. It didnt escalate then, but today it very well could, Mr. Lesser said.

At the same time, the arms control agreements that tried to keep the Cold War cold are nearly all defunct, raising new threats about deployments of conventional forces and medium-range missiles. Russia has also been extremely active in cyber warfare, hacking the German Parliament, interfering in the last French election and issuing mounds of local-language disinformation on social media.

Altogether, the new threats should reinforce the logic of stronger European Union and NATO cooperation on defense, Mr. Lesser said, and should knock a lot of the politics and theology out of that relationship. Coordinating with the E.U. over its areas of strength, like economic sanctions, cyber resilience, energy security and information warfare can only help both organizations, he said, given that 21 of the E.U.s 27 members already belong to NATO and others, like Sweden and Finland, are closely allied.

We need the Americans, said Mr. Bond. But we should not drop the idea of European autonomy and more self-reliance. There are doubts in Europe about whether President Biden will run or win again in 2024 and worries that former president Donald J. Trump or a Republican more in tune with his isolationist, America first credo will take office.

Europe will be very exposed, so it must increase military spending and efficiency, filling real capability needs, Mr. Bond said. All this becomes vital now, and not just a bunch of nice ideas.

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With the Ukraine Invasion, NATO Is Suddenly Vulnerable - The New York Times

Vladimir Putin has said there is broad public support for the invasion of Ukraine that he announced just before dawn on Thursday morning. But by evening, thousands of people in cities across Russia had defied police threats to take to central squares and protest against the military campaign.

Police had made at least 1,702 arrest in 53 Russian cities as of Thursday evening, according to the OVD-Info monitor, as they cracked down on the unsanctioned protests. Most of the arrests were made in Moscow and St Petersburg, where the crowds were largest.

The protesters chanted: No to war! as they exchanged shocked reactions to the attack on Ukraine.

In Moscow, Alexander Belov said he thought that Putin had lost his mind. I thought that we would never see a war like this in the 21st century, said Belov, who arrived early at Moscows Pushkinskaya Square to find it surrounded by police vans. It turns out we live in the Middle Ages.

The mood in Moscow was dark and sombre hours after Putin had announced that he was launching a broad military offensive targeting Ukraine.

I am embarrassed for my country. To be honest with you, I am speechless. War is always scary. We dont want this, said Nikita Golubev, a 30-year-old teacher. Why are we doing this?

His anger and hopelessness were shared by many commuting to work down central Arbat Street. At the Ukrainian culture centre just down the road, the mood was even grimmer.

The Ukrainian administrator said the centre, which aims to promote the language, traditions and identity of a country Vladimir Putin denied the legitimacy of as a modern state in his speech on Monday, would be shut for the coming period.

We are being bombed as we speak. Of course we are closed! Jesus, what is happening? the administrator, who did not want to give his name, shouted.

There were already signs that Russians were uncomfortable with Putins initial decision to recognise the two self-proclaimed republics in Donbas.

On Tuesday, Yuri Dudt, one of Russias most popular media personalities, said he did not vote for this regime and its need for an empire, and felt ashamed, in a post that received almost a million likes in 24 hours.

A fresh poll by the independent Levada Center released on Thursday showed that only 45% of Russians stood in favour of the recognition move that preceded Thursday mornings dramatic events.

I didnt think Putin would be willing to go all the way. How can we bomb Ukraine? Our countries have their disagreements, but this is not a way to solve them, said Muscovite Ksenia.

But outcries of anger were not only felt on the streets of Moscow, where the Guardian did not encounter support for the military assault.

Russias cultural and sporting elite, usually firmly behind Putin and often called upon by the president during election campaigns to gather popular support, also expressed their deep worries about Russias invasion.

Valery Meladze, arguable the countrys most beloved singer, posted an emotional video in which he begged Russia to stop the war. Today something happened that should have never happened. History will be the judge of these events. But today, I beg you, please stop the war.

Likewise, Russian football international Fyodor Smolov posted on his Instagram channel: No to War!!!

US intelligence has for months warned that Russia would seek to fabricate a major pretext before launching an invasion of Ukraine. In the end, no major false flag came, and experts now believe that Putin decided to act without gathering the backing of his own electorate.

Putin seems totally indifferent to approval on the street. Hes acting not like a politician in need of public support, but like a figure from national history books who cares only about the approval of future historians and readers, tweeted Alexander Baunov, a political analyst at the Carnegie Moscow Center.

The Russian leader looked to have also surprised some of Russias most prominent oligarchs, who saw their wealth tumble as the countrys financial markets collapsed.

Just on Monday, after Putin recognised the independence of the two Donbas territories, Oleg Deripaska, a Kremlin-friendly oligarch who once said that he does not separate himself from the Russian state, exclaimed on his Telegram channel that war had been averted. He has since deleted the post.

On Russian state television, the invasion was framed as a defensive mission aimed at preserving Russian lives. Whats the point of a major first strike? However strange or cynical it sounds, its actually humane because it allows everyone around to prevent a large massacre. By immobilising Ukraine, life is being preserved, said pundit Vladislav Shurygin on the Channel One programme Vremya Pokazhet.

Some risked arrest on Thursday evening in order to voice their opposition to the invasion. Zhargal Rinchinov from Buryatia arrived on the square in a jacket with the inscription: No to war. If he held up a sign, he said, he would be arrested.

Everyone is scared, he said. They know if they say something bad then theyll be put in jail. So people pretend they dont notice we have started a war, so they dont have to speak up about it.

For Ukrainians, public messages of opposition to the war will come too late. The country has said that at least 40 soldiers have already been killed and many more civilians injured, as it is threatened with being overrun by a much larger military force.

Yet, sensing that a genuine large-scale pushback against war might be Ukraines best bet, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, Ukraines president, on Thursday morning urged Russians to speak up.

If the Russian authorities dont want to sit down with us to discuss peace, maybe they will sit down with you.

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Thousands join anti-war protests in Russia after Ukraine invasion - The Guardian

Russias invasion of Ukraine could have economic repercussions globally and in the United States, ramping up uncertainty, roiling commodity markets and potentially pushing up inflation as gas and food prices rise around the world.

Russia is a major producer of oil and natural gas, and the geopolitical conflict has sent prices of both sharply higher in recent weeks. It is also the worlds largest wheat exporter, and is a major food supplier to Europe.

The United States imports relatively little directly from Russia, but a commodities crunch caused by a conflict could have knock-on effects that at least temporarily drive up prices for raw materials and finished goods when much of the world, including the United States, is experiencing rapid inflation.

Global unrest could also spook American consumers, prompting them to cut back on spending and other economic activity. If the slowdown were to become severe, it could make it harder for the Federal Reserve, which is planning to raise interest rates in March, to decide how quickly and how aggressively to increase borrowing costs. Central bankers noted in minutes from their most recent meeting that geopolitical risks could cause increases in global energy prices or exacerbate global supply shortages, but also that they were a risk to the outlook for growth.

The magnitude of the potential economic fallout is unclear, but a foreign conflict could further delay a return to normalcy after two years in which the coronavirus pandemic has buffeted both the global and U.S. economies. American consumers are already contending with quickly rising prices, businesses are trying to navigate roiled supply chains and people report feeling pessimistic about their financial outlooks despite strong economic growth.

The level of economic uncertainty is going to rise, which is going to be negative for households and firms, said Maurice Obstfeld, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. He noted that the effect would be felt most acutely in Europe and to a lesser degree in the United States.

A major and immediate economic implication of a showdown in Eastern Europe ties back to oil and gas. Russia produces 10 million barrels of oil a day, roughly 10 percent of global demand, and is Europes largest supplier of natural gas, which is used to fuel power plants and provide heat to homes and businesses.

The United States imports comparatively little Russian oil, but energy commodity markets are global, meaning a change in prices in one part of the world influences how much people pay for energy elsewhere.

The price of oil jumped as high as $105 a barrel on Thursday. If oil increases to $120 per barrel by the end of February, past the $95 mark it hovered around last week, inflation as measured by the Consumer Price Index could climb close to 9 percent in the next couple months, instead of a currently projected peak of a little below 8 percent, said Alan Detmeister, an economist at UBS who formerly led the prices and wages section at the Fed.

It becomes a question of: How long do oil prices, natural gas wholesale prices stay elevated? he said. Thats anybodys guess.

The $120-a-barrel mark for oil is a reasonable estimate of how high prices could go, said Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy. That would translate to roughly $4 per gallon at the pump on average, he said.

It might be difficult to determine how much of the change in energy prices is attributable to the invasion. Omair Sharif at Inflation Insights noted that oil and gas prices had already been going up this year.

I dont know when you want to start the clock on Ukraine becoming a major headline, Mr. Sharif said. Plus, from an American inflation perspective, how much the conflict matters all depends on how much the United States gets involved.

Oil may be the major story when it comes to the inflationary effects of a Russian conflict, but it is not the only one. Ukraine is also a significant producer of uranium, titanium, iron ore, steel and ammonia, and a major source of Europes arable land.

Christian Bogmans, an economist at the International Monetary Fund, said a conflict in Ukraine could further inflate global food prices, which were set to stabilize after skyrocketing last year.

Russia and Ukraine together are responsible for nearly 30 percent of global wheat exports, while Ukraine alone accounts for more than 15 percent of global corn exports, he said. And many of Ukraines growing regions for wheat and corn are near the Russian border.

The rising price of gas and fertilizer, as well as droughts and adverse weather in some regions, like the Dakotas, had already helped to push up the global price of wheat and other commodities. Ukraine is also a significant producer of barley and vegetable oil, which goes into many packaged foods.

Production might be interrupted, and shipping may be affected as well, Mr. Bogmans said. If other countries impose sanctions on Russian food items, that could further limit global supplies and inflate prices, he said.

A rising concern. Russias attack on Ukraine could cause dizzying spikes in prices for energyand food and could spook investors. Theeconomic damage from supply disruptions and economic sanctions would be severe in some countries and industries and unnoticed in others.

The cost of energy. Oil prices already are the highest since 2014, and they have risen as the conflict has escalated. Russia is the third-largest producer of oil, providing roughly one of every 10 barrels the global economy consumes.

Gas supplies. Europe gets nearly 40 percent of its natural gas from Russia, and it is likely to be walloped with higher heating bills. Natural gas reserves are running low, and European leaders have accused Russias president, Vladimir V. Putin, of reducing supplies to gain a political edge.

Shortages of essential metals. The price of palladium, used in automotive exhaust systems and mobile phones, has been soaring amid fears that Russia, the worlds largest exporter of the metal, could be cut off from global markets. The price of nickel, another key Russian export, has also been rising.

Financial turmoil. Global banks are bracing for the effects of sanctionsdesigned to restrict Russias access to foreign capital and limit its ability to process payments in dollars, euros and other currencies crucial for trade. Banks are also on alert for retaliatory cyberattacks by Russia.

But because food costs make up a small portion of inflation, that may not matter as much to overall price data, Mr. Detmeister at UBS said. It is also hard to guess exactly how import prices would shape up because of the potential for currency movements.

If the conflict drives global uncertainty and causes investors to pour money into dollars, pushing up the value of the currency, it could make United States imports cheaper.

Other trade risks loom. Unrest at the nexus of Europe and Asia could pose a risk for supply chains that have been roiled by the pandemic.

Phil Levy, the chief economist at Flexport, said that Russia and Ukraine were far less linked into global supply chains than China, but that conflict in the area could disrupt flights from Asia to Europe. That could pose a challenge for industries that move products by air, like electronics, fast fashion and even automakers, he said at an event at the National Press Foundation on Feb. 9.

Air has been a means of getting around supply chain problems, Mr. Levy said. If your factory was going to shut because you dont have a key part, you might fly in that key part.

Some companies may not yet realize their true exposure to the crisis.

Victor Meyer, the chief operating officer of Supply Wisdom, which helps companies analyze their supply chains for risk, said some companies were surprised by the extent of their exposure to the region during the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2014, when it annexed Crimea.

Mr. Meyer noted that if he were a chief security officer of a company with ties to Ukraine, I would militate rather strongly to unwind my exposure.

There could also be other indirect effects on the economy, including rattling consumer confidence.

Households are sitting on cash stockpiles and probably could afford higher prices at the pump, but climbing energy costs are likely to make consumers unhappy when prices overall are already climbing and economic sentiment has swooned.

The hit would be easily absorbed, but it would make consumers even more miserable, and we have to assume that a war in Europe would depress confidence directly, too, Ian Shepherdson at Pantheon Macroeconomics wrote in a Feb. 15 note.

Another risk to American economic activity may be underrated, Mr. Obstfeld said: the threat of cyberattack. Russia could respond to sanctions from the United States with digital retaliation, roiling digital life at a time when the internet has become central to economic existence.

The Russians are the best in the world at this, he said. And we dont know the extent to which they have burrowed into our systems.

Originally posted here:
How Russias Invasion of Ukraine Could Affect the U.S. Economy - The New York Times

Ukrainian Ambassador to the United Nations Sergiy Kyslytsya raises his phone and shakes it toward the Russian representative, imploring him to call off the war. Screen shot/C-SPAN hide caption

Ukrainian Ambassador to the United Nations Sergiy Kyslytsya raises his phone and shakes it toward the Russian representative, imploring him to call off the war.

Moments after Russia announced the invasion of Ukraine, the Ukrainian representative to the United Nations launched an intense, last-ditch call for Russian President Vladimir Putin to stop the war.

At an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council in New York Wednesday night, Ukraine's U.N. Ambassador Sergiy Kyslytsya held up his smartphone and shook it toward his Russian counterpart, demanding he put an end the invasion right then and there.

"Call Putin, call [Russian Foreign Minister Sergey] Lavrov to stop aggression," Kyslytsya implored in his speech fully in English (full text below). And at the end of his address, he warned: "There is no purgatory for war criminals. They go straight to hell, Ambassador."

Russia happens to hold the rotating presidency of the U.N. Security Council, so its ambassador to the U.N., Vassily Nebenzia, was chairing over a litany of charged speeches by member states against Russia.

Kyslytsya said Nebenzia should hand the Security Council presidency over to a "legitimate member."

Here is the full text of the Ukrainian ambassador's Wednesday night address at the U.N. Security Council.

Ukrainian Ambassador Sergiy Kyslytsya: Distinguished members of the Security Council, Secretary-General, Undersecretary,

Before I try to deliver parts of the statement that I came here with tonight most of it is already useless, since 10 p.m. New York time I would like to cite Article 4 of the U.N. Charter. And it says:

Membership in the United Nations is open to all other peace-loving states which accept the obligations contained in the present Charter and, in the judgment of the Organization, are able and willing to carry out these obligations.

Russia is not able to carry out any of the obligations. The ambassador of the Russian Federation three minutes ago confirmed that his president declared a war on my country. So before I read parts of my statement, I would like to avail the presence of the secretary-general and request the secretary-general to distribute among the members of the Security Council and the members of the General Assembly the legal memos by the legal council of the United Nations dated December 1991, and in particular, the legal memo dated 19th of December, 1991. The one that we've been trying to get out of the secretariat for a very long time and were denied to get it.

The Article 4, paragraph 2 of the charter reads:

The admission of any such state to membership in the United Nations will be effected by a decision of the General Assembly upon the recommendation of the Security Council.

Mr. Secretary-General, please instruct the secretariat to distribute among the members of the Security Council and the members of the General Assembly a decision by the Security Council dated December 1991 that recommends that the Russian Federation can be a member of this organization, as well as a decision by the General Assembly dated December 1991 where the General Assembly welcomes the Russian Federation to this organization.

It would be a miracle if the secretariat is able to produce such decisions.

There is nothing in the Charter of the United Nations about continuity, as a sneaky way to get into the organization.

So when I was coming here an hour ago or so, I was intending to ask the Russian ambassador to confirm, on the record, that the Russian troops will not start firing at Ukrainians today and go ahead with the offensive. It became useless 48 minutes. Because about 48 minutes ago, your president declared war on Ukraine.

So now I would like to ask the ambassador of the Russian Federation to say on the record that at this very moment your troops do not shell and bomb Ukrainian cities, that your troops do not move in the territory of Ukraine.

You have a smartphone, you can call Lavrov right now. We can make a pause to let you go out and call him.

If you are not in a position to give an affirmative answer, the Russian Federation ought to relinquish responsibilities of the president of the Security Council, pass these responsibilities of a legitimate member of the Security Council, a member that is respectful of the charter. And I ask the members of the Security Council to convene an emergency meeting immediately and consider all necessary draft decisions to stop the war.

You declared the war. It is the responsibility of this body to stop the war.

Sergiy Kyslytsya, Ukraine's ambassador to the U.N.

Because it's too late, my dear colleagues, to speak about de-escalation. Too late. The Russian declared the war on the record.

(He raises his smartphone and shakes it, gesturing toward the Russian ambassador.)

Should I play the video of your president? Ambassador, shall I do that right now? You can confirm it.

(The Russian ambassador begins to speak to answer him.)

Do not interrupt me, please. Thank you.

Russian Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia: Then don't ask me questions when you are speaking. Proceed with your statement.

Kyslytsya: Anyway. You declared the war. It is the responsibility of this body to stop the war. So I call on every one of you to do everything possible to stop the war.

Or should I play the video with your president declaring the war?

Thank you very much.

Nebenzia: I must say that I thank the representative of Ukraine for his statement and questions I wasn't planning to answer them, because I've already said all I know at this point. Waking up Minister Lavrov at this time is not something I plan to do. He said the information that we have will be something we provide.

(Later in the meeting)

Kyslytsya: Well as I said, relinquish your duties as the chair. Call Putin, call Lavrov to stop aggression. And I welcome the decision of some members of this council to meet as soon as possible to consider the necessary decision that would condemn the aggression that you will launch on my people. There is no purgatory for war criminals. They go straight to hell. Ambassador.

Nebenzia: I wanted to say in conclusion that we aren't being aggressive against the Ukrainian people, but against the junta that is in power in Kyiv.

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Read the impassioned plea from Ukraine's U.N. ambassador to Russia to stop the war - NPR