After vetoing last Friday the arrival of humanitarian aid to northwestern Syria through Turkey, Russia has accepted this Tuesday that this assistance continues to reach the opposition areas of the Arab country.
This aid works through the coordination of the United Nations. There in the Security Council of this institution, Russia has veto power, along with China, the United States, France and the United Kingdom. This support will last six months and, in January, it will have to be renewed again in the Security Council.
“The issue we are dealing with is life or death. And tragically many people can die from scoundrel of the country that has applied its veto,” the US ambassador to the UN said on Friday, Linda Thomas-Greenfield. During the Russian veto, the tension was palpable in the Security Council: even China, which supports Russia in its policy in Syrialeft alone Moscow in his veto. This Tuesday, however, the agreement has been reached.
A desperate situation
In northwestern Syria they currently live near 4.5 million people, the vast majority of whom are displaced by war. A 90% of them it survives thanks to the help that comes from abroad; near two million They survive only thanks to her.
Every year, Russia threatens to close the border crossing Bab Al Hawathe only one through which aid can enter Syria -years ago this assistance could enter through three different steps, but Moscow vetoed both-, and it does so, according to experts, to make concessions from their western rivals.
This year, however, seemed different: the Russian threat of vetoing all aid input was much more direct. With the war in Ukraine and the bridges between USA y Europa and Russia completely broken, many feared the Russian blockade. It hasn’t ended up like this.
In exchange for allowing the aid to arrive for another six months – something that scares some Onegés who fear that the Russian veto could come the next time, in January, to in the middle of the winter— Russia has managed to get the UN to commit to studying sending more aid to the Damascus regime and be the president Bashar al-Asad, the ally of Moscow, the one that in an indeterminate future distributes the aid to the opposition zones. During the conflict, Assad has used starvation and the restriction of humanitarian aid as a weapon of war.