The last aid deliveries from Turkey to Syrians in the rebel-held northwest took place on Friday, after the U.N. Security Council failed to extend humanitarian aid for another year.
Almost all Council members favored a year-long extension, but Russia demanded a six-month renewal, with a new resolution required for another six months.
Without an agreement, the aid deliveries stopped two days before Sunday's expiration of the Council'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 over 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.
Refugees will nearly immediately suffer the consequences of this vote.
"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.
International aid groups urged the Security Council to reach an agreement before the July 10 deadline warning that the Russian veto will harm millions of people in urgent need of assistance.
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.
This would give Syrian President Bashar Assad's government more control.
AP
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