If there's one favor Russia and China have done for us all lately, it's been to reduce the United Nations to glaring irrelevance in the Syria conflict. Due to these two, there has been no Security Council resolution proposing to deal with Syria, and it looks like there won't be. Repeated emergency meetings and draft resolutions have all arrived at a big nothing.
Why is that helpful? Because it removes the fig leaf assumption that the UN is on the job, ergo something is being done. Too often, when terrible events start to build, the UN becomes the go-to place for relays of special envoys, Security Council resolutions, and grand pronouncements by senior international civil servants. Money is spent, statements are issued, diplomatic huddles take place, crash meetings are called, and in a cloud of bureaucratic palaver, the can gets kicked down the road. Erstwhile leaders of the free world can delay any real decisions, because they have deflected the problem to the UN.