Foreign officials and international aid workers had pleaded with Russia to approve a one-year extension for the humanitarian corridor, which runs from the Bab al-Hawa crossing to the Turkish border in northwestern Syria. The UN mission, which began in 2014, ends on Sunday. But with its veto on Friday, Moscow maintained its long-standing insistence that the route violated Syrian sovereignty – and that it should be up to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to decide how foreign support is distributed. Thirteen members of the UN Security Council voted to continue the aid mission, with China abstaining. Only Russia was against it. “This was a life-or-death vote for the Syrian people, and Russia chose the latter,” Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the US ambassador to the United Nations, said after the vote. “This was already the bare minimum the Syrian people needed to survive.” She and other diplomats said they will try to find another way to ensure Syrians continue to receive food, medicine and other aid. Russia had offered an alternative plan that would have kept the route open for six months and then handed control of humanitarian aid to Syria to Mr al-Assad’s government. But that proposal failed due to concerns that the brief postponement would create too much uncertainty among aid donors and aid groups, leading to a shortage of supplies, and that the route would be closed during the winter when aid is most needed. Russia’s deputy ambassador to the UN, Dmitry Polyansky, said the one-year extension “ignored the interests” of Syria and that the six-month reprieve would prevent “the final closure of the crossing”. “Our position has been clear on the issues here and has been known to everyone from the beginning,” Mr Polyanskiy said. “We have not misled anyone.”
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He urged diplomats to support the Russian plan, “if, of course, the fate of the project is important and not your dubious political games.” More than 5.7 million Syrians have fled the country since the civil war began in 2011. Closing the border crossing could force thousands more to flee, sparking another refugee crisis in Middle Eastern and European countries already facing an influx of people fleeing conflicts in Afghanistan, Ukraine and sub-Saharan Africa. It was also one of the few areas of compromise between the United States and Russia, which for years negotiated deals to leave the route open but ended almost all diplomatic communications after Moscow invaded Ukraine in February. UPDATED July 8, 2022, 6:18 pm ET UN officials have described the Bab al-Hawa route as the gateway for the world’s largest humanitarian aid operation, which has delivered more than 56,000 truckloads of life-saving supplies to northwestern Syria’s Idlib province over the past eight years. Four million people in Syria – including an estimated 1.7 million living in tents – are receiving supplies delivered to Idlib. Humanitarian organizations estimate that 70 percent of Syria’s population lacks reliable food supplies. “Closing the borders could lead to catastrophic consequences,” said Dr. Khaula Sawah, president of the US division; of the Association of Medical Care and Aid Organisations, in a statement ahead of the UN vote. Idlib is the last major rebel enclave in Syria and an area that has also become a haven for al-Qaeda-linked extremists. Russian diplomats have warned that aid delivered there was vulnerable to being taken by terrorist groups. Russia is one of Mr al-Assad’s benefactors in the war and used its veto power in the UN Security Council to help close three other humanitarian corridors into Syria in 2020. Russia agreed last year to keep the Bab al -Hawa after intense negotiations with the United States, with the understanding that the UN mission’s mandate would expire on July 10. Senior congressional officials have accused Russia of helping Mr. al-Assad starve his political opponents by trying to control where international aid is distributed. “We strongly condemn the Russian government’s efforts to obstruct the delivery of much-needed aid to the Syrian people and to perpetuate the numerous atrocities committed against the Syrian people by the Assad regime, Russia and Iran,” the Democratic and Republican leaders of the House and Senate committees that oversee US diplomacy said in a statement this week. The vast majority of Syrian refugees live in Turkey, where officials have warned for years that the diaspora is pushing the country to a breaking point. Current and former diplomats said Russia appeared to be using the aid corridor as a bargaining chip to get Turkey to side with some of Moscow’s demands on the war in Ukraine. But late last month, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey dropped his opposition to allowing Sweden and Finland to join NATO, angering Moscow. Speaking to reporters after Friday’s vote, Mr Polyanskiy said Russia would “obviously” veto other proposals to keep the route open if they deviated from the six-month plan he had offered. Other diplomats noted efforts were being made to secure a nine-month extension, but Ms Thomas-Greenfield said it was not clear a deal could be reached before Sunday’s deadline. China’s ambassador to the United Nations, Zhang Jun, said negotiations could continue even after Sunday, given “the humanitarian situation in Syria and concern for the plight of the Syrian people.” “We still have some time,” Mr. Zhang said, urging diplomats “not to give up.”
