- Leaders begin conversations about the global economy, commercial differences.
- Trump will not sign the joint declaration on Israel-Iran: United States officer.
- Effort to return to Ukraine at Trump’s radar.
The group of seven leaders met Monday in search of a common approach to wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, but before its summit formally began, the president of the United States, Donald Trump, said that eliminating Russia from the old group of eight more than a decade had been a mistake.
Trump’s open support statement for Russian president, Vladimir Putin, was an early challenge for a very close group that has struggled to find the unit while Washington retires from multilateralism.
The leaders of the G7 of Great Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States, together with the European Union, are being summoned in the tourist area of Kananaskis in the Canadian rock mountains until Tuesday.
Talking together with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, Trump said the former group of eight was wrong to throw Russia in 2014 after Crimea attached.
“This was a big mistake,” Trump said, added that he believed that Russia would not have invaded Ukraine in 2022 that he had not been expelled.
“Putin tells me. He doesn’t talk to anyone else … he is not a happy person about it. I can tell you that basically he doesn’t even talk to the people who threw him, and I agree with him,” Trump said.
His comments raise doubts about how much Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy can achieve when he meets leaders on Tuesday. European nations say they want to persuade Trump to support more hard sanctions against Moscow.
Zelenskiy said he planned to discuss new weapons purchases for Ukraine with Trump.
Trump spoke on Saturday with Putin and suggested that the Russian leader could play a mediation role between Israel and Iran.
The French president, Emmanuel Macron, dismissed the idea, arguing that Moscow could not be a negotiator because an illegal war against Ukraine had begun.
A European diplomat said Trump’s suggestion showed that Russia was in American minds.
European officials said they expected to use Tuesday’s meeting with Zelenskiy and NATO general secretary Mark Rutte and the NATO summit next week to convince Trump to harden his position.
“The G7 should have the objective that we converge again, so that Ukraine obtains a high fire to lead to a robust and lasting peace, and in my opinion it is a matter of seeing if President Trump is ready to present much more hard sanctions against Russia,” Macron said.
With an increasing conflict from Israel-Ide, the summit in Canada is considered a vital moment to try to restore an appearance of unity between democratic powers.
In another early sign, the group may have difficulty reaching an agreement on key issues, an American official said Trump would not sign a draft of a statement that requested the Israel-Iran conflict.
However, a Canadian official said that the conflict would appear in bilateral meetings throughout the day and that it was too early to speculate on the result of those conversations. A high European diplomat echoed those comments, saying that Trump had not yet made a decision.
Document draft
Canada has abandoned any effort to adopt a comprehensive statement to avoid a repetition of the 2018 summit in Quebec, when Trump instructed the United States delegation to withdraw his approval from the final statement after leaving.
The leaders have prepared several drafts of documents seen by Reuters, even about migration, artificial intelligence and critical mineral supply chains. However, none of them have been approved by the United States, according to informed sources on documents.
Europeans are on the same page on most issues, a European diplomat said. But without Trump, it is not clear if there will be statements, said the diplomat.
The first five months of Trump’s second term turned foreign policy in Ukraine, raised anxiety for their closest links with Russia and resulted in tariffs on American allies.
Monday’s conversations will focus on the economy, advancing on commercial and China agreements.
The efforts to reach an agreement to reduce the price limit of G7 in Russian oil, even if Trump decided to choose not to participate, they were complicated by a temporary increase in oil prices since Israel launched strikes in Iran on June 12, two diplomatic sources said. Oil prices fell on Monday to the reports that Iran was looking for a truce.
The escalation between the two regional enemies is a high on the agenda, with diplomatic sources that say they hope to urge restriction and a return to diplomacy and encourage Trump to sign a statement.
“I think there is a consensus for decallation. Obviously, what we must do today is to unite that and be clear about how it should be caused,” said Keir Starmer, British prime minister, Keir Starmer.
