The collapse of the ceasefire last month left US policy on Syria in tatters and was a personal blow for Kerry, who negotiated the truce over months of intense diplomacy with Moscow despite scepticism in Washington, including from other senior figures in the Barack Obama administration. Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov said a battery of the S-300 air defense missile systems had been sent to Syria to protect a Russian facility in the Syrian port of Tartus and Russian navy ships off the Mediterranean coast. “We consider that this is our responsibility to do absolutely everything we can do, everything humanly possible to unite the Security Council behind our efforts to end the martyrdom in Aleppo,” France’s UN Ambassador Francois Delattre said before Monday’s meeting.
France seeks United States and Russian support for a Security Council resolution to impose a new truce that will allow aid into Aleppo, which has experienced two weeks of heavy Syrian and Russian bombing of rebel-held areas.