UN, July 18. /TASS/. The UN Security Council met behind closed doors on Thursday to discuss air strikes in Syria’s Idlib, Russia’s UN envoy, Vasily Nebenzya, told reporters.

"We had closed consultations on the situation in Idlib," he said after the meeting. "They [Western powers] are blaming us of bombing a hospital. I provided the information from our Ministry of Defense."

"I planted some grain of doubt within them," he added.

In turn, envoys of the United Kingdom and Kuwait spoke of the need to thoroughly investigate the purported air strikes.

Earlier in the day, Russia’s Defense Ministry has dismissed a report by the Reuters news agency that Russian ground forces and special units are allegedly fighting in Syria. Under an agreement reached with Turkey in 2017, only observation posts of Russian military police are deployed along the perimeter of the Idlib de-escalation zone, the ministry said. According to the ministry, the Russian military police are exercising the ceasefire control jointly with their Turkish counterparts.