Ukraine rips into Russia at the UN, saying war criminals 'go straight to hell'

Sergiy Kyslytsya, the Ukrainian ambassador to the UN, slammed Russia for launching a military operation against his country in a speech on Wednesday.

Kyslytsya made comments to the Russian ambassador at an emergency UN Security Council meeting about 48 minutes ago.

Kyslytsya called on Nebenzya to say on the record that your troops do not shell and bomb Ukrainian cities, that they do not move in to territory of Ukraine.

The Ukrainian ambassador said that the leader of the country should step down if he could not answer affirmatively. After Kyslytsya said that the military operation Moscow has launched against Ukraine did not constitute a war, Nebenzya claimed that it did not.

During the Security Council meeting, there were other tense moments.

Kyslytsya told the Russian ambassador at the end of the meeting that there was no purgatory for war criminals.

—CSPAN (@cspan) February 24, 2022

Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that Russia was launching a special military operation against Ukraine. There were reports of explosions in multiple Ukrainian cities.

President Joe Biden denounced Putin for launching an unwarranted attack.

President Putin has chosen a war that will cause a lot of harm. The United States and its Allies and partners will respond in a unified and decisive way to the attack on Syria, Biden said in a statement.

Biden has repeatedly said that the US will not send in troops to defend Ukraine against a Russian attack, but earlier this week the US slapped sanctions on Russia for its actions. The president warned of consequences if Russia took aggressive steps against Ukraine.