UN aid shipments to Syria
Turkey asks Russia to withdraw its veto
07/11/2022, 9:11 p.m
With its veto in the UN Security Council, Russia is blocking aid deliveries to the Syrian population. These violate Syria’s sovereignty, Moscow argues. In a conversation with Kremlin boss Putin, Turkish President Erdogan urged the green light for the deliveries.
Turkey has called on Russia to stop blocking international aid to Syria. In a conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan insisted that the border crossing for these deliveries must be kept open, the Turkish Presidential Office said.
On Friday, Russia vetoed a resolution in the UN Security Council to extend international aid deliveries to Syria by a year; the mandate expired on Sunday. It is about the last remaining border crossing to Syria, the Turkish-Syrian border post Bab al-Hawa, through which aid supplies from the UN reach the crisis country.
This is the only route through which UN aid can be delivered to the Syrian people without having to pass through areas controlled by Syrian government forces. Moscow sees these deliveries as a violation of Syria’s sovereignty. Last year, almost 10,000 trucks carrying humanitarian aid to more than 2.4 million people made their way to the Idlib region, the last rebel stronghold in Syria.
Germany can only “flank”
The federal government called for an “urgently needed” agreement. “Russia’s veto on Friday showed us that we cannot assume that Russia will give up its cynical game of using humanitarian aid for civilians as a bargaining chip,” said Foreign Ministry spokesman Christofer Burger. Negotiations in New York would continue. However, Germany is currently not a member of the Security Council and can therefore only “flank”.
Russia had proposed extending aid via Bab al-Hawa by just six months initially. However, this was vetoed by the US, France and Great Britain, who argued that this period was too short to guarantee any serious aid to the population.
Russia intervened militarily in the Syrian war in 2015. As a result, the tide turned in favor of the Syrian ruler Bashar al-Assad, whose troops were able to retake a number of areas.