The United States believes two Russian aircraft attacked an aid convoy near Aleppo in a strike that shattered a one-week truce, US officials said on Tuesday.

Despite the military blame game over Monday’s attack, diplomats struggled to save the US-Russian ceasefire agreement that took effect on September 12th.

The incident, in which 18 trucks from a 31-vehicle convoy were destroyed, looked likely to deal a death blow to diplomatic efforts to halt a civil war now in its sixth year.

Two Russian Sukhoi SU-24 warplanes were in the skies above the aid convoy at the exact time it was struck late on Monday, two US officials told Reuters, citing US intelligence that led them to conclude Russia was to blame.

Russia’s foreign ministry spokeswoman denied the assertion, telling reporters at the United Nations the US administration “has no facts” to support the claim, adding: “We have nothing to do with this situation.”

Ben Rhodes, a deputy US national security adviser, said the White House held Russia responsible for what he called an “enormous humanitarian tragedy” but he did not address whether the attack was carried out by Russian aircraft.

Earlier Russia, which denied its aircraft or those of its Syrian government allies were involved, had said it believed the convoy was not struck from the air at all but had caught fire because of some incident on the ground.

The Syrian Red Crescent said the head of one of its local offices and “around 20 civilians” had been killed, although other death tolls differed. The attack prompted the United Nations to suspend all aid shipments into Syria.

Senior officials from 23 nations emerged from a one-hour meeting on Syria at a New York luxury hotel with little more than an agreement to meet again, on Friday, about how to end a conflict that has killed hundreds of thousands and driven millions from their homes.

They also differed on the chances of renewing the ceasefire.

“The ceasefire is not dead,” US Secretary of State John Kerry said after the meeting, which he hosted with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. </s> The US believes Russian warplanes were responsible for an attack on a UN aid convoy operated by the Syrian Arab Red Crescent, officials have told CNN.

At least a dozen aid workers are thought to have been killed by the air strike, which occurred near Aleppo on Monday, hours after the breakdown of a ceasefire brokered by the US and Russia.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon has described the incident as "sickening, savage and apparently deliberate." Mr Ban said the UN had suspended its aid convoys following the attack. Speaking to world leaders at the UN General Assembly in New York, he said: "The humanitarians delivering life-saving aid were heroes. Those who bombed them were cowards.“

The bombing was initially blamed on either Russia or Syria's Assad regime. Both have denied that their planes carried out the strike, but the US has reportedly reached the "preliminary conclusion" that two Russian Su-24 jets were responsible, based on the timing and location of the attack. The strike hit at least 18 of the 31 trucks in the convoy, which was bringing food relief from UN stores to the town of Urm al-Kubra, west of Aleppo, in an area controlled by rebel groups.

The attack came amid a resumption of hostilities following the fragile, week-long ceasefire, which it was hoped would mark the beginning of the end of Syria's bloody five-year civil war.

The Russian Defence Ministry said its intelligence services had studied drone footage from the incident, and did not see evidence of munitions hitting the convoy. The damage inficted on the trucks was "the direct result of the cargo catching fire, which mysteriously began at the same time as a large scale rebel attack on Aleppo,” Russian defence ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said.

A section of the Russian footage was also released, which Mr Konashenkov said "clearly shows" rebels driving a pick-up truck and a mortar, using the convoy as cover.

The US had already made it clear on Monday night that it held Moscow responsible for the deaths, regardless of whose planes carried out the strike.

“We don’t know at this point whether it was the Russians or the regime. In either case, the Russians have the responsibility certainly to... refrain from taking such action themselves, but they also have the responsibility to keep the regime from doing it,” a US State Department statement said.

US Secretary of State John Kerry – who personally negotiated the truce during months of intensive diplomacy with Russia – spoke about the crumbling ceasefire after emerging alongside Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov from a meeting of foreign ministers of 20 countries, gathered to discuss Syria in New York on Tuesday.

Mr Kerry insisted the ceasefire was "not dead" despite the attack, in which a Red Crescent warehouse and health clinic were also seriously damaged, and aid supplies for thousands of people were destroyed. </s> Washington (CNN) The United States has reached the preliminary conclusion that Russian warplanes bombed an aid convoy and warehouse belonging to the Syrian Arab Red Crescent, two US officials told CNN.

"All the evidence we have points to that conclusion," one of the officials said.

The White House position is that Russia is responsible, whether it was Russian planes -- or the Syrian regime's -- that carried out Monday night's attack.

The aid convoy was hit in the area of Urum al-Kubra, west of Aleppo, prompting the United Nations to halt its aid operations in Syria.

It is not clear who was responsible for the strike, which the International Committee of the Red Cross said killed about 20 people as well as the director of the Red Crescent's Urum al-Kubra branch, Omar Barakat.

"All of our information indicates clearly that this was an airstrike. That means there only could have been two entities responsible," deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes said Tuesday night, referring to Russia and Syria. He didn't specify which country's planes carried out the strike.

"We hold the Russian government responsible for airstrikes in this airspace given their commitment under the cessation of hostilities was to ground air operations where humanitarian assistance was flowing," Rhodes said, referring to the terms of a recent ceasefire brokered between the United States and Russia.

Russia denies it was responsible and says that terrorists carried out the attack.

Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said Tuesday that analysis of video footage from drones of the strike show that militants were following the convoy, according to the Russian state news site Tass.

"It is clearly seen in the video that a terrorists' pickup truck with a towed large-caliber mortar is moving along with the convoy," he said.

Syria has also strongly its forces were behind the attack.

"Just when we think it cannot get any worse, the power of depravity sinks lower," Ban told world leaders convening Tuesday at the UN General Assembly annual meeting.

Eighteen of the convoy's 31 trucks were hit, the United Nations said. The convoy was due to deliver food and medical aid for some 78,000 people in eastern Aleppo, where an estimated 250,000 civilians are facing severe shortages as a result of a government siege.

Rebels, locked in a vicious civil war with the Syrian government, reportedly hold the area where the convoy was struck. Russia has been helping Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in the fight, though it has said its efforts are focused on attacking terror groups such as ISIS that have flourished during the conflict.

The US military has been reviewing classified radar, signals and aerial surveillance intelligence.

Based on that intelligence and reports from the ground, it has concluded that only Russian warplanes were in a position to attack this location at the time, the official said.

For now, no intelligence indicates Syrian aircraft or helicopters were in the area, though that type of information could come to light later, the official said.

The official added that reports from the ground appear accurate about at least two waves of airstrikes -- a common Russian military practice. Trucks inside as well as outside the compound on the road were hit.

But the Obama administration has not yet fully decided how much information it wants to reveal, concerned that it will expose sensitive military intelligence capabilities to the Russians.

What about the the ceasefire?

Monday night's attack came just hours after Syrian authorities declared an end to the fragile ceasefire, which began September 12.

Soon afterward, Syrian warplanes resumed airstrikes in Aleppo, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, and deadly violence returned across parts of the country.

The events have left the hard-fought ceasefire brokered by Russia and the US in tatters, although US officials said they believe the ceasefire agreement is still in place.

Rhodes, the deputy national security adviser, said the US preference is to continue with the ceasefire effort, paving the way for more cooperation between the Russian and US militaries in Syria, but that Moscow's actions could prevent further coordination.

"We have not seen good faith. This was an outrageous action," Rhodes told CNN's Michelle Kosinski. "It raises serious questions about whether or not this agreement moves forward."

He added, "In conflicts like this I think we have an obligation to continue to pursue whether there are diplomatic openings. If we can't, we walk away."

US Secretary of State John Kerry said before the convoy was struck Monday that any decisions about the ceasefire would be made between Washington and Moscow.

"The Syrians didn't make the deal," he said, "the Russians made the agreement." </s> The US has blamed Russia for an overnight attack on an aid convoy that killed 20 civilians, as the United Nations announced it was suspending overland deliveries in Syria, jeopardising food and medical security for millions of besieged and hard-to-reach civilians.

Confusion continued about who struck the convoy, but the White House insisted it was either Russia or Syria.

White House deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes said either way the US held Russia responsible because it was Russia's job under the week-old ceasefire to prevent Syria's air force from striking in areas where humanitarian aid was being transported.

"All of our information indicates clearly that this was an airstrike," he said, rejecting the claim by Russia's Defence Ministry that a cargo fire caused the damage. Both Russia and Syria have denied carrying out the bombing.

Within one minute of the strike, the US tracked a Russian-made Su-24 directly over the region of the attack, officials said. Even that revelation failed to definitively implicate Russia because both the Russian and Syrian air forces fly the Su-24, although the US officials said there were strong indications that the jet was flown by the Russian military.

Witnesses described Monday's attack on a Syrian Arab Red Crescent warehouse and convoy in the rebel-held town of Uram al-Kubra in Aleppo province as prolonged and intense, saying the aerial bombardment continued as rescue workers rushed to pull the wounded from the flaming wreckage and rubble.

The convoy was part of a routine dispatch operated by the Syrian Red Crescent, which UN officials said was delivering assistance to 78,000 people in Uram al-Kubra, west of Aleppo city. It was carrying food, medicines, emergency health kits, IV fluids, and other essentials supplied by the UN and the World Health Organisation.

Paramedic and media activist Mohammad Rasoul, who was among the first to arrive at the scene, said more than 100 tons of food, medicine, and baby formula had gone up in flames. He said 18 of the convoy's 31 lorries were destroyed.

The attack "erased the convoy from the face of the earth", he said.

"I've never seen anything like this attack. If this had been a military position it wouldn't have been targeted with such intensity."

He said the attack began around 20 minutes after sunset on Monday and continued for two hours.

Pointing to the fact that Syria's rebels do not possess an air force, the White House said process of elimination indicated that either Syria's military or Russia's launched the attack.

Both Syrian and Russian aircraft operate over the province, while the U.S.-led coalition targets the Islamic State group in other parts of the country.

At the same time the attack took place on Uram al-Kubra, presumed Syrian or Russian jets launched a wave of attacks in and around the nearby city of Aleppo, minutes after Syria's military announced a week-long ceasefire had expired.

A cargo fire would not explain the footage filmed by rescuers of torn flesh being picked from the wreckage, or the witness accounts of a sustained, two-hour barrage of missiles, rockets, and barrel bombs - crude, unguided weapons that the Syrian government drops from helicopters.

Hussein Badawi, the head of the town's Syrian Civil Defence search and rescue group - also known as the White Helmets - said that on the night of the attack he heard the sounds of overhead ballistic missiles, helicopters and fighter jets. He and other witnesses reported seeing a reconnaissance aircraft observing the convoy before the attack.

"There were reconnaissance flights before the air strikes," said Mr Badawi. "They filmed and combed the area, and they knew there was a Red Crescent (facility). The target was the Red Crescent, central and direct."

Russia's Defence Ministry confirmed that a drone had followed the convoy from a warehouse in the government side of Aleppo to its destination in Uram al-Kubra.

The International Committee of the Red Cross said 20 civilians were killed in the attack, many of them killed as they were unloading the trucks. Syrian activists and paramedics had said earlier that the air strikes killed 12.

Witnesses said some of the remains were charred beyond recognition.

Among those killed was Omar Barakat, 38, the local director for the Red Crescent and a father of nine. His brother, Ali Barakat, who was also present at the attack, said it took him three hours to reach Omar, who was trapped in his vehicle.

"I stayed with my face on the floor for about an hour because of the intensity of the strikes," said Mr Barakat. Omar died in an ambulance on the way to hospital.

UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon called it a "sickening, savage and apparently deliberate attack" in his address to world leaders at the UN General Assembly on Tuesday.

"Just when we think it cannot get any worse, the bar of depravity sinks lower," he said, describing the bombers as "cowards" and those delivering aid as "heroes".

The UN's humanitarian agency OCHA announced earlier in the day it had suspended relief convoys in Syria pending a review of the security situation. OCHA spokesman Jens Laerke called it "a very, very dark day for humanitarians across the world". </s> U.S. accuses Kremlin of carrying out a brutal bombing campaign in Aleppo

The U.S. on Monday suspended talks with Russia over the protracted conflict in Syria, accusing the Kremlin of joining with the Syrian air force in carrying out a brutal bombing campaign against the besieged city of Aleppo.

Anticipating the end of the talks after repeated warnings from U.S. officials, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia responded by withdrawing from a landmark arms control agreement that calls for each side to dispose of 34 tons of plutonium, a material used in nuclear weapons.

The developments signalled the further deterioration of relations between the U.S. and Russia.

Last shot 

 

 “Cooperation over Syria was the Obama administration’s last and best shot for arresting the downward spiral in the bilateral relationship with Russia,” said Andrew S. Weiss, a former White House expert on Russia who is vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Just a month ago, it had appeared that Secretary of State John Kerry was on the verge of securing the long-sought cooperation of Russia on Syria through an agreement with Sergey V. Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, that called for a reduction of violence, access to humanitarian aid and the joint targeting of jihadi groups.

But no sooner was the agreement announced than it began to fray — first because of the accidental bombing of Syrian troops by the U.S. and then because of what the U.S. claimed was a deliberate bombing by Russian aircraft and Syrian helicopters of a humanitarian convoy headed to Aleppo.

“This is not a decision that was taken lightly,” John Kirby, the State Department spokesman, said in a statement issued Monday. “The U.S. spared no effort in negotiating and attempting to implement an arrangement with Russia aimed at reducing violence, providing unhindered humanitarian access, and degrading terrorist organizations operating in Syria,” including fighters of the Islamic State and the Levant Conquest Front, an affiliate of al-Qaida formerly known as the Nusra Front.— New York Times News Service </s> WASHINGTON – U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Wednesday called on Russia and Syria to cease flying over Aleppo, just days after a convoy carrying human-aid supplies to civilians in the besieged city was attacked by warplanes.

“I believe we must move forward and try to immediately ground all aircraft flying in those key areas in order to de-escalate the situation and give a chance for humanitarian assistance to flow unimpeded,” Kerry said Wednesday at the U.N. Security Council. “If that happens there’s a chance of giving credibility back to this (cease-fire) process.”

The American and Russian brokered cease-fire that went into effect nine days ago appears all but dead, following the Monday night attack on the humanitarian convoy just southwest of Aleppo that killed at least 20 people.

U.S. officials have blamed Russia or Syria for the attack, while the Russians have denied either party was involved. On Wednesday, Russia claimed a U.S. military drone was in the area during the two-hour attack, implying the American military was responsible for the attack.

It was at least the fourth differing account the Russians have provided of the incident, Kerry said as he asked other Security Council members to use common sense and realize “only two countries have airplanes that fly in that particular area – Russia and Syria.”

A senior Pentagon official on Wednesday denied any coalition aircraft were anywhere near the site of the attack. He added the coalition does not fly near Aleppo because there are no Islamic State group targets in the area.

“We did not have any aircraft flying in that area at that time,” said the defense official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

But the Pentagon would welcome the grounding of Syrian and Russian aircraft over Aleppo, the official said. It would be a first step toward shifting the direction of the cease-fire, which originally called for the U.S. and Russian militaries to begin working together to target the Islamic State group and the al-Qaida-affiliated Nusra Front in Syria.

The Americans had taken the necessary steps to begin preparing the proposed joint command center with the Russians, Air Force Col. John Thomas, a spokesman for U.S. Central Command, said Tuesday. A location for the operations center had been chosen and face-to-face meetings were set to begin soon. But after the convoy attack, he said, the United States was no longer “anticipating any great progress anytime soon.”

It leaves the U.S. military sitting and waiting on word from the State Department and the United Nations that the cease-fire has either officially been terminated or that the Syrian and Russian militaries have taken the appropriate steps to move forward with the deal initially struck.

That original deal included the grounding of all Syrian warplanes in areas controlled by opposition groups. It did not initially call for Russian planes to cease flying in any specific areas, but after the aid convoy attack, Kerry said there are few options remaining for them to prove they are committed to ending the violence in the country and allowing civilians to get much-needed humanitarian assistance.

The top American diplomat said though the original cease-fire plan was not perfect, he remained committed to seeing it through. But that is only possible if the Russians and Syrians do their parts, Kerry said.

“It will take significant and immediate steps now to try to get things back on track,” he said. “… The United States continues to believe there is a way forward that -- although rocky and difficult and uncertain -- can provide the most viable path out of the carnage. Our shared task here (with Russia) is to find the way to use the tools of diplomacy to make that happen.” </s> Syria aid convoy attack appears to be air strike -U.S.

WASHINGTON, Sept 20 (Reuters) - An attack on a convoy carrying humanitarian supplies in the Aleppo area of Syria appeared to be an air strike but it was not carried out by coalition jets, U.S. Central Command spokesman Colonel John Thomas said on Tuesday.

"It was certainly not the coalition who struck from the air. It does look like an air strike," Thomas told reporters during a telephone briefing.

"The only other entities that fly in Syria are Russia and Syria," he said.

The incident could deal a powerful blow to the ceasefire, the latest attempt to halt a war in its sixth year.

The Syrian Red Crescent said the head of one of its local offices and "around 20 civilians" were killed in Monday's strike, which the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights blamed on Russian or Syrian aircraft.

Russia, which is allied with Syria's President Bashar al-Assad's government, denied that either its air force or the Syrian armed forces was responsible. The Syrian army also denied that it was involved in the attack.

The United Nations suspended aid shipments into Syria on Tuesday.

Thomas said the ceasefire in Syria was in jeopardy because of increased violence.

"This is not the vision that I think was put in place more than seven days ago, to try to get humanitarian assistance flowing into the area and try to decrease the level of violence," Thomas said.

On Saturday, Russia said that U.S. jets had killed more than 60 Syrian soldiers.

The strike triggered a war of words between Washington and Moscow and further strained the cessation of hostilities.

Thomas said a brigadier general would be appointed to investigate the incident. (Reporting by Idrees Ali; Editing by Diane Craft) </s> The Paris-based International Union of Medical Care and Relief Organizations, known by its French initials UOSSM, said the attack Tuesday night leveled a medical triage point it operates in rebel-held territory outside the contested city of Aleppo.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said at least 13 people were killed in the attack, including nine militants, some of them belonging to the al-Qaida-linked Fatah al-Sham Front.

The U.S. office of UOSSM said two nurses and two ambulance drivers were killed and one nurse remained in a critical condition following the attack on the medical facility in Khan Touman. It said two of its ambulances, which are run by UOSSM and the World Health Organization, were destroyed and the three-story building collapsed.

“This is a deplorable act against health care workers and medical facilities,” said Dr. Khaula Sawah, the head of UOSSM USA.

There were no reports on who was behind the strike.

The medical facility attack follows a Monday night airstrike on a Syrian Arab Red Crescent aid convoy that prompted international condemnation and recrimination over attacks targeting humanitarian facilities and workers. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon described the convoy strike as a “sickening, savage and apparently deliberate attack.” The convoy was carrying aid materials from the U.N.

The incident exposed rising tensions between the two architects of Syria’s cease-fire deal, Russia and the U.S. The U.S. said it believed Russian or Syrian government jets were behind the attack that killed 20 civilians, and that either way it held Russia responsible because under the truce deal Moscow was charged with preventing airstrikes on humanitarian deliveries. Syria’s rebels do not operate an air force.

In New York on Tuesday, Russian and U.S. diplomats insisted that the Syrian cease-fire, which went into effect nine days ago, was not dead, despite indications of soaring violence. The Syrian military declared Monday night the truce had expired, shortly before presumed Russian or Syrian government jets launched a sustained aerial attack on Aleppo’s opposition-held neighborhoods.

The cease-fire was intended in part to allow humanitarian convoys to reach besieged and hard-to-reach areas throughout Syria. Yet following the convoy attack, the U.N. suspended overland aid operations to hard-to-reach areas in Syria. Syrians living in opposition areas will be disproportionately affected because the U.N.‘s major warehouses are located in government-held areas. The U.N. estimates 6 million Syrians live in besieged and hard-to-reach areas. </s> WASHINGTON—International efforts to end the fighting in Syria have been dealt a serious blow, with the United States suspending direct contacts with Russia on halting the war, and chilly relations are turning even frostier after Russia put a hold on a plutonium disposal deal with Washington.

The two decisions, announced in their respective capitals just hours apart on Monday, were ostensibly unrelated but underscored deep mistrust and rising tensions between the former Cold War foes, who are increasingly at odds on a number of issues, particularly Syria and Ukraine.

The moves further reduce areas of Washington-Moscow cooperation, yet their most immediate impact may be the potential death blow delivered to halting attempts to revive a moribund cease-fire in Syria, get desperately needed humanitarian aid to besieged communities and begin negotiations on political transition that could mean the ouster of President Bashar al-Assad.

The Obama administration said it decided to cut off discussions on Syria because Russia had not lived up to the terms of last month’s agreement to restore a tattered cease-fire and ensure sustained deliveries of humanitarian aid to besieged cities, such as Aleppo, which has been under bombardment from Russian and Syrian forces. White House Spokesman Josh Earnest said: “What’s clear is that there is nothing more for the United States and Russia to talk about with regard to trying to reach an agreement that would reduce the violence inside of Syria and that’s tragic.”

“This is not a decision that was taken lightly,” State Department Spokesman John Kirby said in a statement. “Unfortunately, Russia failed to live up to its own commitments and was also either unwilling or unable to ensure Syrian regime adherence to the arrangements to which Moscow agreed.”

Kirby’s statement said that Russia and Syria are pursuing military action in violation of the cease-fire agreement, and pointed to their targeting of hospitals, as well as the September 19 air strike on a United Nations humanitarian aid convoy. The US accused Russia of bombing that convoy, a charge both Russia and Syria have denied.

Russia intervened on behalf of its close ally Syria on September 30 last year, joining Assad’s bombardment of both anti-Assad rebel groups and militant groups, such as the Islamic State and Fatah al-Sham Front, an al-Qaeda spinoff formerly known as the Nusra Front. Russia is interested in propping up Assad in part because Russia’s only naval facility outside the former Soviet Union is on the Syrian coast.

If it had been implemented, the cease-fire deal would have created a joint US-Russian center to coordinate military and intelligence operations. President Barack Obama had overruled Pentagon objections to such cooperation and Secretary of State John Kerry made the offer.

According to a senior US official, the Pentagon has ordered troops who had been deployed to set up the joint implementation center—fewer than 20—to return to their bases. The official was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly, so the person spoke on condition of anonymity.

The suspension will not affect communications between the two countries aimed at keeping their planes from bumping into each other over Syria.

And, US officials said that, despite the suspension of talks with Russia, they would continue to work for a truce and aid deliveries to Syria in other gatherings, including the International Syria Support Group, a collection of nations that includes Russia. In Geneva the UN special envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura said he was disappointed by the suspension of talks but stressed the UN would continue to work on both the humanitarian aid and political fronts. In Moscow the Russian Foreign Ministry issued a statement, expressing “deep disappointment” about the US move and blasting Washington for the failure to separate the rebels from al-Qaeda’s branch in Syria.

“Washington’s decision reflects the inability of President Barack Obama’s administration to fulfill the key condition for the continuation of our cooperation in overcoming the Syrian crisis,” the statement said. “Or, perhaps, it never had an intention to do so. We are under a growing impression that in its striving for a much-desired change of power in Damascus Washington is ready to ‘make a deal with the Devil’ and forge a union with terrorists, who want to turn history backwards and enforce their inhuman norms by force.”

The ministry added that “the stakes are high,” and warned that the “White House will bear the blame if Syria come under new blows by terrorists.”

The US had agreed to separate the rebel groups but noted it was an extremely slow process. The US has relatively few personnel on the ground in Syria and even the moderate rebels have said they are frustrated with the pace of US help.

The suspension in Syria talks was announced just hours after the Kremlin said Russian President Vladimir Putin had signed a decree halting a joint program with the US on the disposal of weapons grade plutonium.

The decree cited the “emerging threat to strategic stability as a result of US unfriendly actions,” as well as Washington’s failure to meet its end of the cease-fire deal. It said, however, that Russia will keep the weapons-grade plutonium covered under the agreement away from weapons programs.

Under the agreement, which was expanded in 2006 and 2010, Russia and the US each were to dispose of 34 metric tons of plutonium, enough material for about 17,000 nuclear warheads. When it was signed in 2000, the deal was touted as an example of successful cooperation between Washington and Moscow.

The Russian Foreign Ministry said the US has “done all it could to destroy the atmosphere encouraging cooperation.” It cited US sanctions on Moscow over its annexation of the Crimea region of Ukraine and North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s deployment of forces near Russian borders. The White House and State Department voiced disappointment with Russia’s decision to opt out of the program.
The Obama administration claims that Russia was responsible for the bombing of a United Nations aid convoy near Aleppo on September 19. Russia denies its involvement. In the aftermath of the attack, the United Nations suspends all aid convoys in Syria.