The UN Security Council's emergency talks that took place at the request of Russia hours before Ukraine begins a "large-scale anti-terrorist operation", failed to yield any tangible outcome as Moscow and the western powers traded accusations against each other for the crisis.
The special session began after UN assistant secretary-general Oscar Fernandez-Taranco opened the talks saying Ukraine "teeters on the brink" threatening to snowball into a larger international crisis.
US ambassador to the UN Samantha Power stated:
"It is hard to reconcile the behavior of the Russian federation, the propaganda of the Russian federation, the military actions of the Russian federation which range from the massing of 40,000 troops on the border to the subversive activities inside Ukraine. It is hard to reconcile those acts with this appeal for diplomacy and de-escalation, an appeal that we wish were in fact sincere."
