Ukraine's U.N. ambassador on Wednesday night warned his Russian counterpart that "war criminals" go "straight to hell."
During an 11th-hour meeting seeking to avoid an all-out Russian invasion into his country, Ukrainian Ambassador Sergiy Kyslytsya called on the Security Council to stop the Russian aggression.
"It's too late, dear colleagues, to speak about de-escalation. Too late. The Russian President declared a war. Should I play the video of your president? You declared a war. It's responsibility of this body to stop the war," Kyslytsya said.
The Ukrainian ambassador then addressed his Russian counterpart, Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia.
"You have a smartphone. You can call [Moscow]," Kyslytsya told Nebenzia, who was presiding over the meeting.
"I have already said all I know at this point," Nebenzia responded.
Kyslytsya said that most of his statement was "useless now" after the Russian ambassador had stated openly from the floor of the council that President Vladimir Putin had "declared war on my country."
Kyslytsya later called on Nebenzia to relinquish his duties as the chairman of the meeting.
"There is no purgatory for war criminals. They go straight to hell, ambassador," Kyslytsya told Nebenzia.
The two men also disagreed on how to define the military action. Kyslytsya called it an invasion, while Nebenzia said it a "special military operation."
Russian forces invaded Ukraine on Thursday, assaulting by land, sea and air in the biggest attack by one state against another in Europe since World War II.
U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield reminded the council that Russia had called previous predictions "hysterical," saying that U.S. was "lying and supplying the world with misinformation."
"But what we said would happen has come to pass, for all the world to see," Thomas-Greenfield said. "We must confront this threat head on."
British U.N. Ambassador Dame Barbara Woodward said Russia had been holding "a gun to Ukraine's head" for months.
"We will not compromise our commitment to the purposes and principles of the U.N. Charter … most of all the founding principle that we live together as good neighbors," Woodward said.
© 2026 Newsmax. All rights reserved.