Russia had never played the game of cross-border aid to Syria that far.

This time there was no last-minute agreement.

Now it is actually no longer possible for the United Nations to bring humanitarian goods such as food, medicine or drinking water across the Syrian-Turkish border to regions of the country that the dictator Bashar al-Assad does not control.

The permit expired on Sunday.

Christopher Ehrhardt

Correspondent for the Arab countries based in Beirut.

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On Friday, Moscow vetoed a draft tabled by Norway and Ireland that would allow for a six-month extension and another six-month extension unless the UN Security Council decides otherwise.

But Vladimir Putin apparently wants Assad to have more control over humanitarian aid, and he would also like to be able to make new demands every six months.

Its blackmail potential is the lives of millions of Syrians in need of aid.

There is great misery both in Assad's empire, which was bled dry and destroyed, and in north-western Syria, which is dominated by radical Islamists from the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham group.

"Equal to a Death Sentence"

The warnings from officials in the local administration were correspondingly drastic.

An “uncontrollable famine” was imminent.

Health care will collapse.

The same can be heard from aid organizations.

For many of the 4.1 million Syrians in northwestern Syria, most of them women and children, it would be a death sentence if UN aid were to fail, Mark Kaye of the aid organization International Rescue Committee had said before Friday's vote said.

According to the organization Care, around seventy percent of the people there are unsure of an adequate supply of food.

The stocks should be sufficient for a short time.

The last convoy passed the border on Friday.

So the struggle goes on under greater pressure – pressure on those who care about the fate of Syrians in distress.

Meanwhile, many of the civilians stuck around in the north-west of the country have experienced first-hand how Assad and his Russian patrons use hunger as a weapon.

They were brought to the North-West Province from regions that had been besieged, bombed and starved by the regime, with Russian support.

Now that the last entry point has been closed, the Bab al-Hawa border crossing, Moscow's diplomatic siege ring is closed.

The appearance of Russia's deputy ambassador to the UN, Dmitry Polyansky, gave no indication that

Reports of increasing provocations

To the very end, diplomats and aid organizations had hoped that Moscow would not want to give up its blackmail potential completely.

The blockade card, it was said, could only be played by Putin once.

But times have changed with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and it's harder to find compromises on Syria, especially between Washington and Moscow.

The Wall Street Journal reports that American military officials have complained about "increasing provocations" by the Russian air force in areas where American troops are operating.

Humanitarian aid to northern Syria will not dry up completely.

However, bilateral aid deliveries would only be able to replace a fraction of the UN aid, the same applies to the work of other aid organizations.

"All humanitarian aid in north-west Syria is faltering," said IRC staffer Mark Kaye.

It's not just about the deliveries, but about coordination tasks or the financing of local organizations.

Aid across the front, i.e. from the regions controlled by the Assad regime, is minimal.

According to the IRC, since the last permit in December, an average of around 800 trucks per month have been bringing aid across the border on behalf of the UN, enough to care for around 2.4 million people.

And only part of the UN aid for those in need arrives.

Several studies have shown that Assad manipulates them and abuses them to stay in power with increasing success.

The practice of international humanitarian aid has therefore been criticized for some time.

The question of what makes sense would be all the more urgent for the donors if cross-border aid were to be permanently blocked.

Then only the questionable channel via Damascus would remain, which is already causing uneasiness in some donor countries.

Germany is one of the largest donors.

At the most recent Syria conference in May, Berlin pledged more than one billion euros.