SHCHASTIA, Ukraine — While the U.N. Security Council was meeting to avert war, several loud explosions were reportedly heard outside the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, early Thursday, as Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that his forces were conducting a military operation to disarm the country but not take it over.
The move was a stunning — if expected — play from a leader who for weeks has massed his troops on Ukraine’s borders while brandishing threatening rhetoric and snubbing diplomacy. The latest incursion shatters nearly three decades of relative peace in Europe and is certain to elicit a forceful response from the U.S. and NATO. Both Washington and its trans-Atlantic allies have promised to impose even harsher sanctions than those enacted just days ago.
But Putin, who vowed to protect the Russia-backed separatist eastern region of Ukraine, was unbowed and belligerent, warning other countries to stay out of the conflict or risk “consequences they have never seen.”
