some say is underscoring international powerlessness in the face of syria's for tractate warming earlier this week we had unicef issuing a blank statement and now russia who would veto yesterday. this is the u.n. system under attack. it's times like this where the u.n. system really does expose its frailties because it's structured in such a way that there are five countries on it russia britain france the united states and china and they've all got a veto so if they want to they can stop any action by the u.n. security council or russia's on it like i say several times when it comes to syria and the united states does that when it comes to israel quite regularly and so when it's like a core interest of their foreign policy they can stop action that doesn't necessarily mean that the international players aren't doing stuff in syria of course the russians are there the iranians and. the gulf states that they're financially and when it chooses to america gets involved too it was only about a year ago that donald trump the president decided to launch missiles on conch a couldn't so if they