The UN Security Council on Friday voted to renew a cross-border aid operation into northwest Syria, averting further humanitarian disaster in the war-torn region but falling short of what relief organizations said was needed. 

Following a last-minute compromise between Russia and the United States, the 15-member council unanimously agreed to extend the UN’s use of the Bab al-Hawa crossing on the Syrian-Turkish border by six months, followed by another six-month extension subject to a secretary-general report on cross-line aid delivery.

The fate of the United Nations’ aid operation in northwest Syria, which was set to expire Saturday, rested with Syria’s veto-wielding ally, Moscow. The Russian government has argued that humanitarian assistance should be supplied through Damascus, rather than across its borders. 

The UN not only delivers food, medicine and other humanitarian supplies via the Syrian-Turkish border each month, but coordinates and funds the work of local and international nongovernmental organizations operating in opposition-controlled Idlib province. Three-quarters of the population in northwest Syria relies on outside aid, 85% of which the UN says arrives through the Bab al-Hawa border crossing.