WASHINGTON – Russia on Friday vetoed a measure that would have allowed the last UN aid route to Syria to remain open for another year, in a vote that diplomats and critics said endangered the lives of millions who are already suffering after more than a decade of war. .
Foreign officials and international aid workers had called on Russia to approve a one-year extension for the humanitarian corridor, which runs from the Bab al-Hawa crossing on the Turkish border to northwestern Syria. The UN mission, which began in 2014, expires 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 in favor of continuing the aid mission and China abstained. Only Russia opposed it.
“This was a life or death vote for the Syrian people, and Russia chose the latter,” Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said after the vote. “This was already the minimum the Syrian people needed to survive.”
She and other diplomats said they would 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 over control of humanitarian assistance in Syria to the government of Mr. al-Assad.
But this proposal failed because of concerns that the short suspension would create too much uncertainty among donors and relief groups, leading to a shortage of supplies, and that the route would be closed during the winter when help is most needed. .
Russia’s deputy ambassador to the UN, Dmitri Polyanskiy, said the one-year extension “ignores Syria’s interests” and that the six-month break would have prevented “the definitive closure of the passage.”
“Our position has been clear on the issues here and everyone knows it from the beginning,” Mr. Polyanskiy. “We haven’t fooled 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. The closure of the border crossing could force thousands more to flee, causing another refugee crisis in Middle Eastern and European countries. who are 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 had negotiated agreements to leave the route open, but ended almost all diplomatic communications after Moscow invaded Ukraine in February.
Updated
July 8, 2022, 06:18 ET
UN officials have described the Bab al-Hawa route as the gateway to the world’s largest humanitarian aid operation, one that has delivered more than 56,000 trucks loaded with life-saving supplies. Idlib province, northwestern Syria, for the past eight years. Up to four million people in Syria, including some 1.7 million living in tents, receive supplies that are delivered to Idlib.
Aid groups estimate that 70 percent of Syria’s population does not have reliable food supplies.
“The closure of the border could have catastrophic consequences,” Dr. Khaula Sawah, president of the U.S. chapter of the Union of Health Care and Relief Organizations, said in a statement ahead of the UN vote.
Idlib is Syria’s last major rebel enclave and an area that has also become a haven for al Qaeda-linked extremists. Russian diplomats have warned that the aid delivered there was vulnerable to being taken by terrorist groups.
Russia is one of the benefactors of Mr. al-Assad at war and used his veto power on the UN Security Council to help close three other humanitarian corridors in Syria by 2020. Russia agreed last year to keep Bab al-Hawa open after ‘intense negotiations. with the United States, with the understanding that the mandate of the UN mission would expire on July 10.
Senior Congress officials have accused Russia of aiding Mr. al-Assad starving his political opponents by trying to control where international aid is distributed.
“We strongly condemn the Russian government’s efforts to hinder the delivery of much-needed aid to the Syrian people and to perpetuate the many atrocities they are committing against the Syrian people by the Assad regime, Russia and Iran,” they said. say Democratic and Republican leaders on House and Senate committees overseeing U.S. 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 have said Russia appeared to be using the aid corridor as a bargaining chip to persuade Turkey to side with some of Moscow’s demands over the war in Ukraine. But late last month, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan abandoned his opposition to allowing Sweden and Finland to join NATO, outraging 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 it had offered.
Other diplomats noted that efforts were being made to negotiate a nine-month extension, but Ms. Thomas-Greenfield said it was not clear that an agreement 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 the care of the suffering of the Syrian people.”
“We still have some time,” Mr. Zhang, calling on diplomats “not to give up.”