Russia vetoes UN Aid and Access permission to Idlib, forcing Turkey to negotiate.

Concerns over UN aid delivery amid fears Syria crossing may close

Idlib is run by an ‘Ex Al Qaeda’ HTS jihadis, financed and partly occupied by Turkey, and helped by UN Aid and various ‘dealings’. Separately Turkey’s dictator Erdogan is declaring daily he will invade Northern Syria again with a huge ongoing military buildup.

Russia needs to avoid a direct clash with imperialist Turkey, and may be seeking ways to contain Erdogan in exchange for allowing aid and ‘trade’ via the key Bab Al-Hawa border crossing to continue, agencies speculate. Starvation diplomacy vs. military confrontation.

The crossing links Idlib directly to the Turkish province of Hatay, formerly Arabic, annexed by a rigged referendum in 1939 and Turkified over 80 years.

Turkish military convoy enters Idlib

Lack of agreement regarding humanitarian aid deliveries is likely to affect more than four million citizens in Idlib, northwest Syria.

Syria as a whole is already blockaded by draconian US sanctions. Also Kurdish NE Syria, controlled by the AANES Rojava revolutionaries who defeated ISIS, is blockaded by Turkey, Damascus and Iraq and threatened again imminently by a Turkish invasion.

Residents of Syria’s rebel-held northwest may lose access to critical aid within weeks if the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) does not extend the authorisation for cross-border deliveries, which expires on Sunday, officials said.

The Idlib statelet was created by the deportation there of thousands of defeated militants from all over Syria when the Damascus regime finally won the disastrous war.

The last aid deliveries from Turkey to Syrians in the rebel-held northwest took place on Friday, after the UNSC failed to extend humanitarian aid for another year by way of a Russian veto.

see also: Large Turkish military convoy enters northwestern Syria A large Turkish military convoy entered Syria on Saturday through the Bab Al-Hawa border crossing in northwestern Syria heading towards Jabal al-Zawiya with technical and armored vehicles, tanks, and bulldozers. video

“Russia pushed us to tents, to hunger, thirst, and heat. And now they want to deny us the food aid basket that barely sustains us for half of the month,” said Zahra Alrahmoon, a resident of the Ahl al-Tah camp in Idlib province for internally displaced Syrians……

Without an agreement, the aid deliveries stopped two days before Sunday’s expiration of the UNSC’s current one-year mandate for deliveries through the Bab al-Hawa border crossing from Turkey to northwest Idlib.

The decision is likely to affect more than four million citizens, according to Mazen Allouche, the crossing’s media office manager.

“It’s a prelude to a complete and uncontrollable famine,” said Allouche from his office.

Bab Al-Hawa border crossing

Refugees will nearly immediately suffer the consequences of this vote.

Russia, a close ally of Syria’s government, has repeatedly called for stepped-up humanitarian aid deliveries to the northwest from within Syria, across conflict lines.

Erdogan urges Putin to keep Syria aid crossing open

This would give President Bashar al-Assad’s government more control………

Reporting from the Turkish-Syria border, Al Jazeera’s Sinem Koseoglu said many people in northwest Syria were worried what would come next.

“Russia says that UN aid deliveries should not be allowed through Bab al-Hawa crossing, but should be delivered through Damascus instead.

Diplomats seek deal to keep critical Syria aid flowing

“But when you speak to people and aid organisations, they are not sure how fair aid distributions will be if UN aid deliveries are conducted through Damascus.

• Russian veto on Syria border aid could spell disaster for Idlib
• More than 300,000 civilians killed in Syrian conflict: UN report