On Ukraine, Russia repeats insistence that it had no choice

By JENNIFER PELTZ
Associated Press

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Russia has told the world that it has “no choice” but to take military action in Ukraine. After days of denunciations of Russia at the prominent diplomatic gathering, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov sought to shift the focus to Washington. His speech centered on a claim that the United States and its allies are aggressively undermining the international system that the U.N. represents. The West maintains that it’s Russia doing that. Invoking history ranging from the U.S. war in Iraq in the early 2000s to the 20th-century Cold War, Lavrov portrayed the U.S. as a bully