U.N. Yields to Russia’s Limits on Aid Mission in Syria
WASHINGTON — World powers agreed on Tuesday to continue a United Nations aid mission to northwest Syria for six more months, bending to a deadline demanded by Russia that will, for now, avoid shutting down lifesaving deliveries for about four million people living amid an 11-year civil war.

Just days earlier, Russia had vetoed a plan at the U.N. Security Council to keep the humanitarian aid corridor, from Bab al-Hawa on the Turkish border into Idlib Province, open for one more year. In response, Western diplomats had then rejected a Russian proposal to instead allow the mission to remain for six months, calling it too short and unacceptable, given that the food, medicine and other supplies would be cut in the middle of winter, when the aid is needed the most.

But with little alternative to help war-weary Syrians — more than one million of whom have been living in tents during the conflict that began in 2011 — the council adopted the six-month mission as officials consider how to assist after it ends.