Thank you, Madam President.
Thank you, Special Envoy de Mistura, for being here
and for your refusal to give up.
We have convened the Security Council today
because the Russian Federation and the Assad regime
have launched an all-out air and ground
offensive against eastern Aleppo and its 275,000 civilians.
Russia and Assad have reportedly launched
more than 150 airstrikes over the last 72 hours,
killing at least 139 people and injuring hundreds more,
laying waste to what is left of an iconic Middle Eastern city.
These are people who have suffered horribly
in the five and a half years of war,
yet they call the attacks from the air
"unprecedented in quantity and quality."
The Assad regime is explicit: it believes only
in a military solution.
It says it is going to conquer militarily
every last square inch of Syria.
And it does not care what's left of Syria in pursuing
that military solution.
Instead of pursuing peace, Russia and Assad make war.
Instead of helping get life-saving aid to civilians,
Russia and Assad are bombing the humanitarian convoys,
hospitals, and first responders who are trying desperately
to keep people alive.
Russia will argue today, no doubt,
that these attacks are meant to fight terrorism,
and that the people killed in this offensive
are terrorists or terrorist sympathizers.
This is absurd.
Look at the facts.
In the first 24 hours of their assault on eastern Aleppo
- an assault, I would note, whose first strikes
were carried out in the middle of meetings
here in New York in which Russia was saying
it wanted to recommit to a cessation of hostilities
- Russia and the regime struck not one, not two,
but three of the four bases used by the White Helmet volunteers
in eastern Aleppo.
The White Helmets are first responders
who bravely rush to the scene of bombings
to dig through the rubble for survivors.
Every day, they save lives by driving ambulances and fire
trucks and - where there are no roads left,
running on foot - to the homes, schools, hospitals, and markets
that Russia and Assad have attacked.
And the White Helmets continue to do this,
even though they know that the regime routinely carries out
now infamous "double-tap" airstrikes -
in which they strike a target, wait for first responders
to arrive, and then strike again.
A month ago, the world was shocked by the dazed stare
of five-year-old Omran Daqneesh as he
sat in the back of an ambulance after his home was bombed.
He was rescued by White Helmets.
But because of Russia and Assad's attacks
these last few days, fewer kids like Omran
are going to be rescued.
Those buried alive in rubble in eastern Aleppo
are much more likely to die in rubble.
Another target that the latest Russia-Assad offensive
struck at its outset was the Bab Al-Nairab pumping station,
as we've heard, which supplies drinking water
to the people in eastern Aleppo.
As a result, two months after the Assad regime cut off
eastern Aleppo from deliveries of food, medicine,
and humanitarian aid, residents will now
be at risk of disease and infection
as they drink whatever dirty, untreated water they can find.
I would note that an opposition group also turned off
a nearby pumping station that supplies water
to some of the more than 1.5 million people
in western Aleppo, which we condemn.
Water should never be used as a weapon of war,
and Aleppo's residents should not
be forced to drink water that makes them sick, wherever
they live.
This is obscene.
Eastern Aleppo remains under siege as we convene here today.
It seems the only items making it into eastern Aleppo
these days are barrel bombs and incendiaries
that witnesses report seeing dropped by Assad's forces
and Russian forces.
The combined impact on civilians of relentless airstrikes
and blockades is crushing.
Fuel for diesel generators - the main source of electricity
- is running out.
Within a week, there may not be enough power
to keep producing bread.
Bread.
Hospitals - which have already relocated emergency rooms
to basements and bunkers in an attempt
to protect their patients from routine airstrikes
- can barely keep the lights on.
Because the electricity is so often knocked out,
doctors have learned to conduct operations
by the light of their cell phones.
And yet each new airstrike brings them
more and more maimed civilians, who
they are forced to treat with fewer and fewer supplies.
Look at the photos that people in eastern Aleppo
have posted online in the last two days.
Syrians slumped in blood-spattered hallways;
men, women, and children covered in rags lying in pools of blood
in these makeshift hospitals.
Unconscious babies who need someone
to pump oxygen into their lungs manually when generators fail.
And if these victims need specialist treatment,
they can't get it.
Even worse, they cannot leave eastern Aleppo.
They are trapped, savagely, medievally.
The UN assembled a convoy of trucks
to deliver aid to eastern Aleppo more than a week ago,
but it remains blocked by the fighting, unable to drive
into this inferno.
Russia, of course, has long had the power
to stop this suffering.
The United States worked with Russia
for eight painstaking months to develop an arrangement that
included a renewed commitment to the cessation of hostilities.
Just last week, the United States
sponsored two ministerial meetings
of the International Syria Support
Group aimed at halting the violence
and returning to a cessation of hostilities.
We did so not because we think Russia
has acted in good faith in Syria;
we know as well as anyone that Russia has consistently
said one thing, and done its opposite.
We did so because we know that there can be no peace in Syria
if Russia is determined to keep fighting this war.
And we believe that we must do everything
in our power to find a way to halt the violence,
and get on the path to a political transition, which
is the only way to end this conflict.
That is why, even now, we will continue
to look for any way possible to restore
the cessation of hostilities.
BUT IT IS COMMON SENSE: a one-sided cessation
of hostilities cannot hold.
You cannot carry out a massive military offensive and say you
are for peace.
That might work on Russia Today.
But it doesn't work when the world
has reams of evidence proving exactly what Russia is doing.
Last Wednesday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov
sat in this chamber and declared that, when it comes to Syria,
"Russia has consistently advocated
an exclusively peaceful solution."
Yet given when the offensive began,
it is not unreasonable to think that Russian and Syrian forces
were literally loading the incendiary munitions and barrel
bombs onto their aircraft as Minister Lavrov spoke here
of making peace.
The next day, after Russia and the regime
began to rain its bombs down on civilians in eastern Aleppo,
Minister Lavrov told the press that plans for a cessation
of hostilities "must be saved."
This is Russia's approach to "saving"
the cessation of hostilities?
As the UN has said repeatedly - including today -
these airstrikes on residential neighborhoods
may well be war crimes.
Russia today will no doubt - again -
accuse the United States of causing all of this chaos.
They might point to the single airstrike,
in which the Counter-ISIL Coalition appears to have
struck a Syrian military position -
a strike that we immediately acknowledged and committed
to investigating in full.
Russia will likely try to divert from its own actions
by invoking U.S. actions elsewhere in the past.
What you can be sure - sure - that Russia will not
do today or any day is accept any responsibility
for its actions.
What you can be sure that Russia will not do is tell the truth.
Fellow members of the Security Council,
I urge you now to look at the remarks
that you have brought today and ask yourself:
Does what I am about to read reflect the gruesome facts
on the ground?
Does it speak candidly to who is unleashing this appalling
violence?
Would I feel comfortable reading these remarks
to a chamber packed with the residents of eastern Aleppo
being besieged by Assad's forces and by Russia?
If not, I urge you to speak directly
to Syria's grim reality and the people who must live
with it day in and day out.
This is not the day, this is not the time
to blame all sides, to draw false equivalencies.
It is not the time to use the passive voice that is so common
here in the Security Council.
It is not the time to say that "airstrikes took place,"
or "civilians were killed."
It is time to say who is carrying out those airstrikes,
and who is killing civilians.
Russia holds a permanent seat on the UN Security Council.
This is a privilege, and it is a responsibility.
Yet in Syria and in Aleppo, Russia
is abusing this historic privilege.
And while members of this Council
- certainly including the United States -
have a deep interest in having constructive ties
with the Russian Federation, history
will not look kindly on those Council members who stay silent
in the face of this carnage.
Russia would have this Council live in "upside-down land,"
where bombing first responders, cutting off humanitarian aid,
and supporting a murderous regime is billed
as counterterrorism.
Let's be clear: there are terrorists in Syria
- lots of them - and all of us have
an interest in destroying them.
They pose a threat to all of our citizens.
That is why the United States leads a 67-country coalition
that has rolled back 40 percent of ISIL's territorial holdings
in Iraq and Syria, and which each week liberates
more desperate civilians.
That is why the United States negotiated the recent agreement
with Russia, signaling that we were prepared
to work with Russia to fight Jabhat Al-Nusra
and ISIL in Syria.
Nobody has to convince the United
States of America of the danger posed by terrorists.
Our citizens are often priority targets all around the world.
But when Russia is espousing fiction,
we have to call that out.
What Russia is sponsoring and doing is not counterterrorism;
it is barbarism.
Let me conclude.
On Friday, footage emerged of the aftermath
of one of the many recent airstrikes in eastern Aleppo.
In the video, first responders dig
through the rubble of what was once a building,
throwing aside chunks of concrete.
And then, suddenly, one hears on the video
the piercing scream of a child.
A child literally submerged in concrete and rubble.
The first responders then began to dig more frantically,
until the head and blue and white shirt of the little girl
emerges.
A girl crying out in pain and in terror.
Eventually, tenderly, the first responders remove the rubble
from around her, and pull that girl -
five-year-old Rawan Alowsh - from the wreckage,
her body covered in white dust.
It feels like a miracle, watching her come out alive.
And yet, everyone else in Rawan's immediate family
was reportedly killed in that airstrike.
Her mother.
Her father.
Her four siblings.
All killed.
What chance does Rawan have in this world -
what chance does she have with no family,
but also with not even a single sign that her attackers have
a shred of empathy in them?
When violent attacks against civilians
are surging; when norms of civilized behavior that we have
spent more than 70 years trying to build are being trampled;
when there is complete impunity for targeting aid convoys,
civilian, residential neighborhoods,
children, hospitals - impunity - what chance
does Rawan or any of us have?
One first responder said of the relentless assault
of the last few days: "People don't know what to do
or where to go.
There is no escape.
It feels like the end of the world."
The end of the world.
It is apocalyptic what is being done to eastern Aleppo.
Surely, for Rawan - who, at five years old,
has lost her entire family - this Council
can at the very least have the courage
to say who is responsible for this.
And, in a single voice, tell Russia to stop.
Thank you.