In an uncharacteristically sharp rebuke that demonstrated the Kremlin's deep sense of alarm, Russian President Vladimir Putin condemned President Bush's decision to launch a military strike against Iraq and called for a swift end to the war.

Convening an emergency session of Russia's security council, Putin told his top aides Thursday that the U.S.-led war in Iraq risked casting the United States as a nation with little regard for the tenets of international law.

The Russian leader called the war on Iraq "a big political mistake."

"If we allow international law to be replaced by the law of the fist," Putin said, "then one of the main principles of international law, the principle of the inviolability of the sovereignty of states, will be thrown into question."

Putin expressed concern about a new international landscape in which the U.S. views heeding world opinion in global crises as an option, not a necessity.

Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev called the U.S. action "an attempt to teach a lesson to all other states and shows that the U.S. administration is trying to make the world its own province."