The United Nations Security Council headed toward approval of a U.N. resolution Tuesday to extend humanitarian aid deliveries to 4.1 million people in Syria's opposition-held northwest after Russia won its demand for only a six-month mandate.

Ireland and Norway, which had sponsored a resolution calling for a yearlong extension that was vetoed Friday by Russia, circulated a new draft Monday that provides for a six-month extension of deliveries through the Bab al-Hawa crossing until Jan. 10, 2023.

As Russia demanded, a further six-month extension after that would require a new Security Council resolution.

Brazil's U.N. mission, which holds the council presidency this month, scheduled a vote for Tuesday morning.

The draft resolution is almost identical to the Russian draft resolution that failed to get council support last Friday.

At the heart of the apparent back down by supporters of a yearlong extension is Russia’s adamant refusal to consider any timetable beyond six months and the fact that the Security Council’s last mandate, for a year, ended Sunday, stranding U.N. cross-border deliveries.

In Friday’s votes, the Ireland-Norway draft resolution for a one-year extension was supported by 13 countries, with China abstaining and Russia using its veto to defeat the measure.

Council members then voted on the rival Russian resolution for a six-month extension, which got only two "yes" votes, with China the only country to join its ally Russia in supporting the resolution. The three other veto-wielding permanent council members – the United States, Britain and France – voted against it and 10 countries abstained. The vetoes were not needed, however, because the resolution failed to get the minimum nine "yes" votes required for approval.

U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield warned after Friday’s votes that "I have long said this is a life-and-death issue" and "people will die because of this vote."

Thomas-Greenfield, who visited Bab al-Hawa in June, said aid workers told her that a six-month renewal would be "a disaster" for their supply lines. They told her it "would mean lifesaving assistance would shut off in the dead of winter when needs are at their highest, which would be a nightmare scenario for a region where millions of people are still displaced."

But Russia’s Deputy Ambassador Dmitry Polyansky told reporters there was "99% agreement" on a resolution and said Russia wouldn’t support a nine-month extension, suggested as a compromise by Brazil and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

Unless council members decide to go with the Russian six-month proposal, Polyansky said, he saw no possibility for an agreement. Asked whether that meant that Russia would veto any proposed resolution that didn’t follow its draft with a six-month timeline, he replied: "Obviously."

That left the rest of the council with no alternative but a six-month extension if they want to see the continuation of cross-border deliveries that Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and more than 30 nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) also consider crucial.

One addition to the new draft calls for Guterres to provide a report on humanitarian needs in Syria by Dec. 10 to assess the impact of a possible border closing in January if the resolution isn't renewed.

The draft also calls for Guterres to brief the council monthly and issue reports at least every 60 days on the progress of cross-line deliveries, humanitarian assistance delivered from Turkey and "early recovery projects" in Syria that Russia has pushed for.

Northwest Idlib is the last opposition-held bastion in Syria and a region where an al-Qaida-linked militant group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), is the strongest. The U.N. said recently that the first 10 years of the Syrian conflict, which started in 2011, killed more than 300,000 civilians, the highest official estimate of civilian casualties.

Russia, a close ally of Syria’s Bahar Assad regime, has repeatedly called for stepped up humanitarian aid deliveries to the northwest from within Syria, across conflict lines. This would give the Assad regime government more control.

In early July 2020, China and Russia vetoed a U.N. resolution that would have maintained two border crossing points from Turkey for humanitarian aid to Idlib. Days later, the council authorized the delivery of aid through just one of those crossings, Bab al-Hawa.

In a compromise with Russia, that one-year mandate was extended on July 9, 2021, for six months, with an additional six months subject to a "substantive report" from U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. This was effectively a yearlong mandate because a second resolution wasn’t needed.

Before last week’s vote, U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric called cross-border aid critical for men, women and children in the northwest and stressed the importance of long-term planning, including costs, in supporting a yearlong extension.

Erdoğan-Putin meeting

Ahead of the vote, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Monday urged his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin to agree on a solution with Western powers that could keep humanitarian aid flowing into Syria.

Erdoğan's appeal came as diplomats at the United Nations scrambled to find a solution to preserve the system that has allowed aid to reach the war-ravaged country via Turkey since 2014.

"Erdoğan emphasized that he attaches importance to the extension of the cross-border mechanism in Syria," his office said in a statement issued after telephone talks following the expiry Sunday of the mechanism.

The Kremlin made no mention of the Syria crossing in its readout of the call.

But it said the two leaders discussed preparations for a summit to be held "in the near future."

Erdoğan has been offering to meet Putin for months in a bid to help resolve global tensions that have reached historic highs since Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

The Turkish-Syria border at the Bab al-Hawa crossing is the only way U.N. assistance can reach civilians without navigating areas controlled by Syrian regime forces.

Discussing the issue of the Syrian settlement, the Russian and Turkish presidents stressed the importance of trilateral joint work within the framework of the Astana process.

The Astana peace process was launched in January 2017 at the initiative of Turkey, Russia and Iran. Its meetings also contribute to the advancement of the U.N.-led diplomatic process in Geneva.

Meanwhile, the Kremlin said on Tuesday that Putin will meet Erdoğan and Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi during a visit to Tehran next Tuesday.

It will be only Putin's second foreign trip since the start of Moscow's armed intervention in Ukraine on Feb. 24, following a trip to Central Asia at the end of June.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said that Putin will travel to Tehran next Tuesday to attend a trilateral meeting with the leaders of Iran and Turkey, the so-called Astana format of meetings for Syria-related talks.

Peskov told reporters Tuesday that during the visit, Putin will also have a separate meeting with Erdoğan.