While Western officials have been uniformly blaming Russia for everything that goes wrong in Aleppo, the UN was a bit more even-handed today in comments about the lack of evacuations during last week’s Russian ceasefire, saying all sides shared responsibility for the failure.
Russia initially declared an eight hour ceasefire, and then made it 11 hours. They then extended it to several days of 11 hours per day, with the UN eyeing the second day for a medical evacuation. They didn’t get the authorization from the Aleppo rebels in time, however.
Or at all, Ultimately, the ceasefire expired and fighting resumed with only a handful of people choosing to evacuate. The rebels never authorized any UN operations to evacuate wounded people, nor to bring any humanitarian aid into the area.
Russian officials have insisted they don’t intend to implement any additional ceasefires without some assurance from the rebels within eastern Aleppo that they’ll allow people to flee, and will allow the UN to facilitate medical evacuations, noting that was the whole point of the plan
