2023-05-19 14:03:05
The leaders of the G7 have opened their summit in Hiroshima this Friday with a message of unity and firmness before Russia by assuring that their commitment to Ukraine will last “as long as necessary”. They have also proposed to increase the pressure on Moscow with a greater number of sanctions on its economy and have even warned that they will make it pay the costs of the invasion, an objective as gigantic as it is impossible, but with which they reinforce the damage record of the war that the Council of Europe has decided to install in The Hague.
“We are imposing more sanctions and measures to increase the cost for Russia and for those who support its war effort,” say the leaders of the seven most developed countries in a statement that thus sends warning signals to governments such as Belarus and, in Special Chinese. Regarding the Xi Jinping regime, the G7 has not yet found reasons to make it renounce its conviction that it is lukewarm with its condemnation of the invasion and even close to the Kremlin. Within this context of general warning one could also understand the EU’s discomfort with India, which buys oil from Russia and sells it in large quantities to Europe after refining it.
The Group assures that it will continue to provide support to kyiv at all levels: military, humanitarian, financial and diplomatic. In this way, it reinforces the idea of a block support and without fissures, necessary in the current context, with the current discussion between Ukraine’s allies on the so-called ‘hunting coalition’. Prompted by the UK and Germany to supply F-16s to the Ukrainian army, the US remains reticent about the consequences of an escalation of the war with Russia involving NATO. However, as published today by ‘The Washington Post’, the White House would be willing to deactivate the blocking of licenses on its fighters, which will allow European partners such as the Netherlands, Belgium or Italy to cede some of their American F-16s to the ukrainians.
Kiev has been so insistent on this issue that it has even wanted to convince the Pentagon that the war in its country represents an ideal opportunity to test the capabilities of the United States in a hypothetical confrontation with Russia “without endangering any American life,” according to has declared the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Dimitro Kuleba. So far only Poland and Slovakia have supplied Ukraine with their Mig-29s, but Zelensky’s cabinet has bitterly protested their age and ineffectiveness against modern Russian fighters.
G7 leaders and their guests enjoy a boat ride at the start of their summit in Hiroshima
Reuters
Sources of this Executive have confirmed on the other hand that the Ukrainian president will be in Japan this Sunday in order to deliver a speech before the representatives of the G7. The confirmation occurs after different crossed messages in which it was indicated that his intervention would be done by videoconference. The secretary of the National Security and Defense Council, Oleksiy Danilov, explained in a radio interview that in Hiroshima “very important things will be decided and, therefore, the presence of our president is absolutely essential to defend our interests and present proposals and clear arguments about the events taking place on the territory of our country”.
Apparently, France has offered to put a plane at the disposal of Zelensky, who has arrived in Saudi Arabia this morning to participate in the Arab League summit. His goal is to “improve ties” between kyiv and these countries with which he is seeing for the first time since the beginning of the war. “I will meet with Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salmán and will hold other bilateral interviews,” the president wrote on his Telegram account.
On the nature of the sanctions that it will impose on Russia, the G7 has not gone into details, but it has offered indications that the unity is not exactly total. Japan will expand on its own the list of restrictions on entities and companies that the Government already has in place. The United States, the United Kingdom and Canada will jointly decide what actions to adopt while Italy, Germany and France will do so within the measures agreed upon by the European Union. However, all the partners agree that the sanctions will be aimed at “stifling the Russian war machine”, probably through the application of severe restrictions on “exports of essential items for Russia and its war of aggression, including those used in the battlefield”. Thus, it is foreseeable that the punitive measures will be directed against the arms industry, although Brussels also wants to deal a heavy blow to the diamond trade, which provides the Russian giant with an income of 3,700 million euros per year only in exports. “Diamonds are not forever,” said the president of the European Council, Charles Michel, emphatically, a guest at the Hiroshima summit.
#support #Ukraine #long #takes