“All military action, air and artillery strikes,” would be halted daily from 10am to 1pm, said Lieutenant-General Sergei Rudskoi, a senior official in the Russian defence ministry.
But the United Nations has described the brief, daily truces as insufficient to deliver aid.
"To meet that capacity of need, you need two lanes and you need to have about 48 hours to get sufficient trucks in," Stephen O'Brien, the UN’s chief humanitarian aid official, told reporters on Wednesday.
“You have to ask, what can be achieved in three hours,” he added.
The UN has called for weekly 48-hour truces to allow for delivery of aid.
The head of the Aleppo branch of the Syria Civil Defence, a team of volunteer first responders known as the White Helmets, denounced the United Nations for abandoning Aleppo during the month-long siege. Abdullah Nawhlu testified before the UN Security Council on the situation in Aleppo on Monday, speaking by video recorded on Sunday. The sounds of gunfire could be heard in the background, at times drowning him out.
Nawhlu said that in the past month, the White Helmets had responded to 450 events and about 250 people had been killed, including two of his own volunteers.
Describing the hardships he and his volunteers faced while Aleppo was under siege and constant bombardment, pulling bodies out of rubble without the financial support to even feed their volunteers, Nawhlu said, “During all these disasters, what broke our hearts, is that we didn’t see any movement from the UN. No denouncements. No condemnation. We didn’t hear about plans to deliver humanitarian aid to 350,000 civilians besieged in the city. There was an absence of the UN and humanitarian organisations and an international silence about the regime’s siege of the city of Aleppo. This should be shameful. It should be shameful to humanity. Everyone who thinks of himself as a human and thinks of others as human, should be ashamed.”
Greater disasters will happen, he warned, if nothing is done.
His prediction may already be playing out. On Wednesday evening, the Syrian Campaign reported that a chlorine gas attack had been carried out on eastern Aleppo. A number of civilian casualties have been reported.
Rebel fighters broke a government siege on eastern neighbourhoods of Aleppo on Sunday, gaining control over Ramousah Road and opening up a route to bring supplies into the estimated 275,000 civilians living in the area.
The route has not been fully secured due to heavy bombardment and airstrikes by government forces but some goods have been brought in. On Wednesday, formerly bare shelves were laden with food and other goods, including cigarettes.
"This morning, a number of trucks carrying vegetables and other food entered the markets in my neighbourhood," a smiling Abu Omar in the Sukkari district told AFP. "The stalls were full of all kinds of things I hadn't seen in a month. I bought potatoes, tomatoes, and chicken, and I'll ask my wife to make us grilled chicken with potatoes tonight."
Residents shopped eagerly, uncertain when the next shipment of foods might make it into the beleaguered neighbourhoods.
Seizing the Ramousah Road has also made it difficult for supplies to be brought into government-held western Aleppo. Within hours of the road being taken by the opposition forces, the price of vegetables increased dramatically in the western neighbourhoods.
According to UN agencies, up to 2 million people in the city have not had running water for four days, leading to concerns about the risk of disease.
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