headlines: Russia Votes to Shut Down Last U.N. Aid Route Into Syria
articles: “Our position has been clear on the issues here and have been known to everybody from the very beginning,” Mr. Polyanskiy said. “We haven’t misled anyone.”
  
  He urged diplomats to support the Russian plan, “if, of course, the fate of the project is important, and not your dubious political games.”
  
  More than 5.7 million Syrians have fled the country since civil war began in 2011. The border crossing’s closure could force thousands more to leave, setting off another refugee crisis in countries in the Middle East and Europe that are already dealing with an influx of people escaping conflicts in Afghanistan, Ukraine and sub-Saharan Africa.
  
  It was also one of the few areas of compromise between the United States and Russia, which had for years negotiated agreements to leave the route open but ended nearly all diplomatic communications after Moscow invaded Ukraine in February.
  
  U.N. officials have described the Bab al-Hawa route as the gateway for the world’s largest humanitarian aid operation, one that has delivered more than 56,000 truckloads of lifesaving supplies to Idlib Province in northwestern Syria over the last eight years. As many as four million people in Syria — including an estimated 1.7 million who are living in tents — receive supplies that are delivered to Idlib.
  
  Aid groups estimate that 70 percent of Syria’s population does not have reliable food supplies.
  
  “Closing the cross-border could result in catastrophic consequences,” Dr. Khaula Sawah, the president of the U.S. chapter of the Union of Medical Care and Relief Organizations, said in a statement ahead of the U.N. vote.