Permanent Mission of the Russian Federation to the United Nations

Permanent Mission of the Russian Federation to the United Nations

Statement by Permanent Representative Vassily Nebenzia at UNSC briefing on the political and humanitarian situation in Syria

Mme.President,

We welcome Mr.Geir Pedersen and Ms. Joyce Msuya to this meeting and thank them for the briefings. We also followed the remarks by Ms. Nirvana Shawky.

At the political track, we note the convening of the seventh round of the Editorial Board of the Constitutional Committee in Geneva on 21-25 March. It is essential that Syrians have this opportunity for a direct dialogue and discussions of future basics of their state. We believe there is no alternative to continuation of Syrian-owned and Syrian-led political process under UN assistance and in full compliance with UNSC resolution 2254. We deem it important that Special Envoy Pedersen should stick to his direct mandate stipulated in UNSC resolution 2254, and engage more actively with the Syrian sides in the first place.

I am saying this because we have increasingly more questions to SESG’s attempts to promote his “step-by-step” initiative, concrete essence, the pool of participants and added value of which remain unclear so far. Besides, both official Damascus and the opposition reject his ideas. I shall not conceal that we fear this scenario might negatively impact the effectiveness of SESG’s efforts at the Constitutional Committee track, i.a. in the context of preparing its next session.

Mme.President,

Despite the fact that Syria has had no large-scale hostilities since March 2020, the situation on the ground remains volatile. There is permanent tension around the Idlib de-escalation zone. HTS fighters turned it into a terrorist enclave where they in fact keep Syrian civilians as hostages. At the same time, we see some attempts to whitewash terrorists by means of making them part of pseudo-authorities that are created in Idlib. This cannot trick anyone: splitting terrorists into “the bad” and “the good” is unacceptable.

Regular clashes also take place along the perimeter of three other zones of Turkish operations in northern Syria.

The events around Sina’a prison in Hasakeh at the beginning of this year gave a clear illustration of the fact that terrorists across the Euphrates had gained strength, and ISIL had “raised its head” given actual inertness of the United States and its allies. “Security zone” in Al-Tanf that has been occupied by Washington is another source of threat. Trained by American instructors, fighters take action against the Syrian forces and make refugees stay in Rukban, blocking deliveries of humanitarian assistance to the camp.

Another grave destabilizing factor is Israel’s arbitrary air strikes that violate air spaces of Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Iraq. By varying data, there have been around 40 such attacks in the past year that victimized both Syrian military and civilians, including women and children.

Socio-economic situation in Syria keeps deteriorating against the backdrop of suffocating unilateral sanctions and politicized approaches of Western states to providing humanitarian aid to Syrians. Food basket prices hit new records, Syrian pound is losing value, the number of people in urgent need of humanitarian assistance has reached 14.6 million. Western states’ illegitimate policy of sanctions against a number of countries including Syria, of whose policies Washington and its satellites disapprove, has long turned into a cruel war on peaceful population that uses economic coercion in place of guns and projectiles.

We underscore that 2022 UN humanitarian response plan for Syria stipulates that a considerable share (25 %) of early recovery projects should address recovery of medical and educational facilities, as well as water supply systems. However, experience has proven that such plans often remain under-financed, and quite often, donors put forward political pre-conditions before implementing development and reconstruction projects. Largely due to these factors, more than a half of Syrians still live in areas that need to be mine cleared, and one third of households only have energy for no longer than a couple of hours a day.

Remarkably, we still have this unacceptable situation now, nine months after the unanimous adoption of UNSC resolution 2585 that is designed to establish regular domestic access to all parts of Syria and boost early recovery. It is worth mentioning that over all this time, only three cross-line convoys could access Idlib, as for the north of the country, it can receive no procurement from Damascus at all.

As an excuse, we often hear about the lack of required permits on the part of HTS terrorists whom I already mentioned and unsafe working environment for humanitarians on the ground. We perceive all this as mere unwillingness to solve the problem of humanitarian deliveries from Damascus to i.a. Idlib. Let me be frank, in such circumstances, we can hardly see any reason why the “cross-border resolution” should be renewed again.

Thank you.