Russia, together with China, questioned the future of the UN mission in Syria by vetoing the third consecutive Security Council resolution. In contrast to the blocked ones, our country proposed its own resolution allowing the mission to continue its work on other conditions, but Washington refused to support it.
Western countries and Russia share a number of issues. First, whether to apply any sanctions against the regime of Bashar Assad, the President of Syria. Secondly, the parties cannot agree on the format of the presence of observers during the civil war. Russia and China believe that a group of civilian and military specialists should monitor the ceasefire and conduct independent investigations into cases of human rights violations. In addition, Russia wants to include up to 30 of its military personnel in the mission in Syria. They are promised to be liaison officers, military observers and staff officers.
The position of the United States and the West is based on a radical revision of the mission's objectives. Western leaders want to retrain mission members as negotiators and help Assad and his opponents begin peace talks. As an aid to these negotiators, they expect to exert some pressure on the Syrian president in order to hasten an end to the bloodshed. One of the conditions imposed on Assad is the withdrawal of artillery and heavy equipment from settlements.
The latest resolution, blocked by Russia and proposed by Western countries, contained the demands to end the war under the threat of sanctions. The UN Security Council, by resolution, gave Assad a ten-day period to leave the settlements, and in case of failure to do this, promised to impose diplomatic and economic sanctions. At the same time, the resolution did not exclude the use of military force. It was the last position that the representatives of Russia and China did not like. In the opinion of our Chinese colleagues, pressure on only one of the belligerents will exacerbate the crisis and spill it out beyond Syria.
In the end, the principled position taken by Russia and China on this issue was approved by the Security Council, and a generally accepted text of the resolution was agreed, calling for peace negotiations on both sides. This approach suits both sides and will allow reaching an agreement on the extension of the UN observation mission in Syria.
