The New York Times reports the United States and allied nations sought to isolate Russia at an emergency United Nations Security Council meeting over the Ukraine crisis, calling Moscow’s recognition of two separatist regions and the deployment of Russian troops to them a blunt defiance of international law that risks war. 

The unusual late-evening meeting of the Council was requested by Ukraine after President Vladimir V. Putin ordered troops into the so-called Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics, escalating a conflict that Western officials warn could explode into one of the biggest armed clashes in Europe since World War II. 

The U.N. meeting quickly turned into a diplomatic rebuke of Russia’s actions, which were roundly condemned as a violation of the United Nations Charter and the sanctity of national borders.

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“Russia’s clear attack on Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity is unprovoked,” Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the American U.N. ambassador, told fellow diplomats. Ridiculing Mr. Putin’s assertion that Russian forces had been deployed as peacekeepers, she said: “This is nonsense. We know what they really are.”

Ms. Thomas-Greenfield said Mr. Putin was “testing our international system, he is testing our resolve and seeing how far he can push us all,” and she called his attempt to recreate the Russian empire an antiquated throwback.

“Putin wants the world to travel back in time. To a time before the United Nations. To a time when empires ruled the world,” she said. “But the rest of the world has moved forward. It is not 1919. It is 2022.”

The representatives of France and Britain issued similar denunciations. “Russia is choosing the path of confrontation,” said France’s ambassador, Nicolas de Rivière. Britain’s ambassador, Barbara Woodward, said: “Russia has brought us to the brink. We urge Russia to step back.”

New York Times