Access to food and medicine, a recurrent weapon of war in Syria, has emerged again as a political flash point: The Syrian government’s most powerful ally, Russia, is balking at the proposed renewal of a United Nations measure that allows aid deliveries to pass through Syria’s borders into rebel-held areas of the country, without permission from government authorities.

Russia’s ambassador to the United Nations, Vassily Nebenzia, has said such deliveries, authorized by a Security Council resolution that expires in January, impinge on Syria’s sovereignty.

The United Nations emergency relief chief, Mark Lowcock, has called cross-border aid shipments “essential to save lives.” Over the years, United Nations aid officials have chronicled how hard it has been to get permission from Syrian government authorities to cross front lines and deliver food, blankets and medicines to people living in areas under opposition control.

The debate over cross-border aid comes as the government of Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, with military backing from Russia, has reclaimed a great deal of the territory it lost over nearly seven years of war. With the battlefield reshaped, international aid groups that had worked in opposition-held areas are now weighing how to serve those very same communities that are now under government control.

Read the full article by Somini Segupta about humanitarian aid from The New York Times