Russia has backed off objections to a United Nations probe to determine who carried out chemical weapons attacks in Syria, allowing the Security Council to create a new investigative unit on Thursday empowered to assign blame.
The Kremlin has previously used or threatened to use its veto power as a permanent member of the Security Council to limit investigation of deadly chlorine and sarin gas attacks in Syria's civil war to confirming that they occurred without identifying the perpetrators.
Russia holds the Security Council's rotating presidency for September, and its U.N. ambassador, Vitaly Churkin, delivered a letter to Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Thursday in support of creating a joint investigative unit with the U.