The UN meeting on Ukraine warned that a full-scale Russian invasion of its neighbor would have devastating global repercussions that would likely trigger a new "refugee crisis".
The dire warning was made during the annual General Assembly session on “temporarily occupied Ukraine” that has been held at UN headquarters in New York every year since Russia annexed Crimea in 2014.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned the agency that the world was facing a moment of danger over the crisis.
"If the conflict in Ukraine expands, the world could see a scale and severity of need not seen for years," he said.
"It is time for restraint, excuse and de-escalation," Guterres added, stressing there is no room for actions or statements that would "take this dangerous situation from the abyss." .
Meanwhile, the United States Ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, said the invasion could displace 5 million people, more than the 3 million she said had been affected by Russia's military action in eastern Ukraine.
"If Russia continues down this path, in our estimation, it could create a new refugee crisis, one of the largest facing the world today," he said.
Thomas-Greenfield added that because Ukraine is one of the world's largest suppliers of wheat to developing countries, Russian military operations could lead to spikes in food prices and lead to more severe hunger in places like Libya, Yemen and Lebanon.
"The tidal wave of suffering caused by this war is unthinkable," he said.
Earlier Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said such a conflict would mark "the end of the world order as we know it."
He also appealed to the United Nations to hold Moscow accountable for what he called its attacks on "core principles of international law."
"If Russia does not get a strong, swift and decisive response now, it will mean the complete bankruptcy of the international security system and international institutions, which are tasked with maintaining global security order," he said.
"This is a grim scenario, one that will take us back to the darkest times of the 20th century," he added.
Kuleba called Russia's claims that it was acting to prevent a military operation planned by Kiev in the Donbas area "absurd" and called on Russia to withdraw troops from Ukrainian soil.
"We Ukrainians want peace, and we want to solve all problems through diplomacy," he stressed.
All 193 UN members who attended the meeting, mostly spoke against Moscow.
Russia's UN Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia said today's tensions were the result of the 2014 "coup" that toppled the pro-Russian former prime minister, Viktor Yanukovych. He said that since then the Ukrainian government had carried out a "genocide" in the Donbass.
