By — Nick Schifrin Nick Schifrin By — Teresa Cebrián Aranda Teresa Cebrián Aranda Leave your feedback Share Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/one-man-chose-this-war-u-n-security-council-discusses-russian-horrors-in-ukraine Email Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest Tumblr Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Transcript Audio The war in Ukraine took center stage at the U.N. Security Council as leading players on opposite sides came face-to-face for the first time since Russia's invasion. They waged verbal battle as the war claimed more casualties. Nick Schifrin reports. Read the Full Transcript Notice: Transcripts are machine and human generated and lightly edited for accuracy. They may contain errors. Judy Woodruff: This has been a dramatic day for the United Nations Security Council, with the war in Ukraine taking center stage.Leading players on opposite sides of the conflict came face-to-face for the first time since Russia's invasion last February. They waged verbal battle as the shooting war claimed more casualties.Nick Schifrin has our report. Nick Schifrin: In a war that Russia says only targets the military, today, the target was a Ukrainian hotel, and residents of Zaporizhzhia have lost help. Lillia Krasovska, Zaporizhzhia Resident (through translator): For me, it doesn't matter anymore. It doesn't matter if it kills me. I have nobody to bury me. Nick Schifrin: At the same time in New York, the Security Council held an unusually senior-level meeting about a war that Secretary of State Antony Blinken called existential.Antony Blinken, U.S. Secretary of State: One man chose this war. One man can end it, because, if Russia stops fighting, the war ends. If Ukraine stops fighting, Ukraine ends. Nick Schifrin: The diplomats discussed Russian horrors, including a mass burial site of more than 400 Ukrainians, among the exhumed, a soldier wearing a bracelet of Ukraine's colors. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba: Dmytro Kuleba, Ukrainian Foreign Minister: I do wear want too. I just wanted to show it to you. Many of us do. And Russia should know one thing. It will never be able to kill all of us. Nick Schifrin: Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov walked in 20 minutes after Blinken finished and said Moscow considered the war necessary. Sergey Lavrov, Russian Foreign Minister (through translator): The decision to conduct the special military operation was inevitable. Ukraine prepared to play the role of anti-Russia, a staging ground to create a threat to Russian security. And I assure you that we will never accept this. Nick Schifrin: And Russia is now escalating the war, politically, printing ballots for what NATO today called sham referenda, asking residents of four occupied regions of Ukraine whether they want to join Russia, and militarily, doubling the number of troops already in Ukraine.Online video shows Siberian recruits heading to the front, part of a mobilization of 300,000 reservists that many appear to be trying to flee. Multiple border crossings are backed up, including this one to Russia's neighbor Georgia. Denis, Russian Citizen (through translator): It looks like a lot of people want to leave. So it has all become a bit of a mess, lots of cars. Person: We're on way home to our families, by the skin of our teeth. Nick Schifrin: But, today, both sides celebrated a prisoner swap, British American and more than 100 Ukrainian soldiers, as well as pregnant Ukrainian women, freed from Russian captivity, in exchange for a well-known politician close to Putin and Russian soldiers.But both sides said even the war's largest prisoner exchange will not stop the fighting.For the "PBS NewsHour," I'm Nick Schifrin. Listen to this Segment Watch Watch the Full Episode PBS NewsHour from Sep 22, 2022 By — Nick Schifrin Nick Schifrin Nick Schifrin is PBS NewsHour’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Correspondent. He leads NewsHour’s daily foreign coverage, including multiple trips to Ukraine since the full-scale invasion, and has created weeklong series for the NewsHour from nearly a dozen countries. The PBS NewsHour series “Inside Putin’s Russia” won a 2017 Peabody Award and the National Press Club’s Edwin M. Hood Award for Diplomatic Correspondence. In 2020 Schifrin received the American Academy of Diplomacy’s Arthur Ross Media Award for Distinguished Reporting and Analysis of Foreign Affairs. He was a member of the NewsHour teams awarded a 2021 Peabody for coverage of COVID-19, and a 2023 duPont Columbia Award for coverage of Afghanistan and Ukraine. Prior to PBS NewsHour, Schifrin was Al Jazeera America's Middle East correspondent. He led the channel’s coverage of the 2014 war in Gaza; reported on the Syrian war from Syria's Turkish, Lebanese and Jordanian borders; and covered the annexation of Crimea. He won an Overseas Press Club award for his Gaza coverage and a National Headliners Award for his Ukraine coverage. From 2008-2012, Schifrin served as the ABC News correspondent in Afghanistan and Pakistan. In 2011 he was one of the first journalists to arrive in Abbottabad, Pakistan, after Osama bin Laden’s death and delivered one of the year’s biggest exclusives: the first video from inside bin Laden’s compound. His reporting helped ABC News win an Edward R. Murrow award for its bin Laden coverage. Schifrin is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a board member of the Overseas Press Club Foundation. He has a Bachelor’s degree from Columbia University and a Master of International Public Policy degree from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). @nickschifrin By — Teresa Cebrián Aranda Teresa Cebrián Aranda Teresa is a Producer on the Foreign Affairs & Defense Unit at PBS NewsHour. She writes and produces daily segments for the millions of viewers in the U.S. and beyond who depend on PBS NewsHour for timely, relevant information on the world’s biggest issues. She’s reported on authoritarianism in Latin America, rising violence in Haiti, Egypt’s crackdown on human rights, Israel’s judicial reforms and China’s zero-covid policy, among other topics. Teresa also contributed to the PBS NewsHour’s coverage of the war in Ukraine, which was named recipient of a duPont-Columbia Award in 2023, and was part of a team awarded with a Peabody Award for the NewsHour’s coverage of the Israel-Hamas war.