Russia on Saturday vetoed a UN draft resolution demanding an end to the bombing of Syria’s war-battered city of Aleppo, despite an appeal from France to save the city from destruction.
It was the fifth time that Moscow used its veto to block UN action to end the five-year war in Syria, which has claimed 300,000 lives.
The draft text presented by France won 11 votes in favor in the 15-member UN Security Council, but there were two votes against, from Russia and Venezuela, and two abstentions, from China and Angola.
French Minister of Foreign Affairs Jean-Marc Ayrault urged the council to take immediate action to save Aleppo from being destroyed by the Russia-backed Syrian bombing campaign.
As the vote got under way, the Syrian regime pressed its assault on rebel-held areas of Aleppo, where 125,000 people are living under siege and facing almost daily bombing.
The council “must demand immediate action in order to save Aleppo,” Ayrault said ahead of the vote.
Russia has presented its own rival draft text that urges a ceasefire, but does not make any mention of halting the bombing campaign.
Russian Ambassador to the UN Vitaly Churkin said he expected that measure also to fail.
“What is at stake today is first and foremost the fate of Aleppo and its people,” Ayrault said. “But it’s more than that — it’s the hope of establishing at last an end to a conflict for which we are all, all of us, paying the catastrophic consequences.”
In a message directed at Russia, Ayrault said any country that opposes the French measure will “give [Syrian President] Bashar al-Assad the possibility of killing even more.”
The Syrian and Russian bombing campaign has escalated since the Russian-backed Syrian army launched an offensive to retake the city on Sept. 22.
German Minister of Foreign Affairs Frank-Walter Steinmeier warned that the mounting tensions between Washington and Moscow over the conflict had created a situation “more dangerous” than the Cold War.
“It is a fallacy to think that this is like the Cold War,” Steinmeier said in an interview published by Bild on Saturday. “The current times are different and more dangerous.”
Russian ally Damascus has made significant advances in its renewed two-week-old offensive in Aleppo, seizing territory to the north and pushing back the front line in the city center which had remained largely static since the rebels captured eastern districts in 2012.
However, it has come at a heavy human cost.
Since the regime offensive began a few days after a US and Russian-brokered ceasefire collapsed, at least 290 people have been killed in rebel-held areas, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported.
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