- Leaders begin talks about global economics, trade differences.
- Trump for not signing a joint statement of Israel-IRan: the official of the United States.
- Effort in progress to put Ukraine back on Trump’s radar.
Group of seven leaders met on Monday for sought a common approach to wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, but before their summit formally began, US President Donald Trump said to remove Russia from the former group eight over a decade ago had been a mistake.
Trump’s obvious statement of support for Russian President Vladimir Putin was an early challenge for a once tight grouping that has struggled to find unity as Washington retires from multilateralism.
G7 leaders from Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States together with the European Union call in the area of Kananaskis in the Canadian Rockies until Tuesday.
Trump, who spoke with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, said the former group of eight had been wrong to kick Russia out in 2014 after the annexed Crimea.
“This was a big mistake,” Trump said, adding that he thought Russia would not have invaded Ukraine in 2022 had not been pushed out.
“Putin speaks to me. He doesn’t talk to anyone else … he is not a happy person about it. I can tell you that he basically doesn’t even talk to the people who threw him out and I agree with him,” Trump said.
His comments raise doubts about how much Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy can achieve when he meets the leaders on Tuesday. European nations say they want to persuade Trump to support harder sanctions against Moscow.
Zelenskiy said he was planning to discuss new arms 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.
French President Emmanuel Macron rejected the idea and argued that Moscow could not be a dealer because it had started an illegal war against Ukraine.
A European diplomat said Trump’s proposal showed that Russia was very much on American minds.
European officials said they were hoping to use Tuesday’s meeting with Zelenskiy and NATO General Secretary Mark Rutte and next week’s NATO summit to convince Trump to harden his attitude.
“G7 should have the goal for us to converge again, for Ukraine to get a ceasefire to lead to a robust and lasting peace, and in my opinion it is a matter of seeing if President Trump is ready to make much harsher sanctions against Russia,” Macron said.
With an escalating Israel-IRan conflict, the summit in Canada is seen as an important moment to try to restore a semblance of unity among democratic power centers.
In another early sign that the group can struggle to reach agreement on key issues, a US official said Trump would not sign a draft statement that requires the step-down of the Israeli-Iran conflict.
However, a Canadian official said the conflict would come up with bilateral meetings all day, and it was too early to speculate on the result of these conversations. A senior European diplomat repeated these comments and said Trump had not yet made a decision.
Draft documents
Canada has left any effort to adopt a comprehensive communication to avert a repeat of the 2018 summit in Quebec when Trump directed the US delegation to withdraw his approval of the final communication after leaving.
Leaders have prepared several draft documents seen by Reuters, including on migration, artificial intelligence and critical mineral supply chains. However, none of them are approved by the United States, according to sources informed about the documents.
Europeans are on the same page on most questions, a European diplomat said. But without Trump, it’s unclear if there will be any statements, the diplomat said.
The first five months of Trump’s second period set out foreign policy in Ukraine, raised anxiety over his closer ties to Russia and resulted in tariffs on US allies.
Lecture Monday will center around the economy, promote trade agreements and China.
Efforts to reach an agreement to lower the G7 prize on Russian oil, although Trump decided to opt out, were complicated by a temporary increase in oil prices since Israel launched strikes on Iran on June 12, two diplomatic sources said. Oil prices fell Monday on reports that Iran sought a ceasefire.
The escalation between the two regional enemies is high on the agenda, where diplomatic sources say they hope to urge restraint and return to diplomacy and would encourage Trump to sign a statement.
“I think there is a consensus for de-scaling. Obviously, what we need to do today is bringing it together and being aware of how it should be created,” British Prime Minister Keir Stormer told journalists.
