HIROSHIMA, Japan, May 20 (Reuters) – Ukrainian Volodymyr Zelensky met Narendra Modi of India on Saturday and was scheduled to meet other leaders from the “Global South” at a Group of Seven (G7) summit aimed at expanding the Support your country in its war against Russia.
The three-day G7 meeting in the Japanese city of Hiroshima has already agreed to new sanctions against Russia and measures to deal with what it called economic coercion from China, drawing anger from Moscow and a complaint from Beijing to the summit host. , Japan.
Zelenski, coming from an Arab League summit and dressed in his usual olive green uniform, was warmly received by the G7 leaders and held talks with Modi as part of a series of meetings with the non-aligned countries in attendance.
Modi’s Twitter account posted a photo of the two shaking hands, noting that he had communicated to Zelensky India’s readiness to continue providing humanitarian aid to the Ukrainian people and its support for “dialogue and diplomacy” to seek peace.
Modi, whose country forms the so-called BRICS group along with Brazil and China, has not distanced himself from Russia. Its oil deals with Russia are seen as undermining Western sanctions by allowing Russia to continue to benefit from energy revenues.
A source in the French presidency told reporters that Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva would also meet Zelenski during his stay in Hiroshima.
European officials said it was crucial that Zelensky attend in person first Friday’s Arab League summit in Saudi Arabia and now the Hiroshima meeting so he could lay out Ukraine’s vision of how the war with Russia can be ended. .
“I think it is a unique opportunity to (have) exchanges with many southern countries and express their situation, express a message and share a point of view,” French President Emmanuel Macron said. “I think it can be a game changer.”
RUSSIAN AND CHINESE IRA
The G7 countries – the United States, Japan, Germany, Britain, France, Italy and Canada – are grappling with challenges posed by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and tensions with China, including over Taiwan, the self-governing island that Beijing claims as own.
On Friday, the leaders announced new measures aimed at hitting the Russian economy and pledged more military support, including backing from US President Joe Biden, for training Ukrainian pilots to fly F-16 fighters.
Concerned about the huge role China currently plays in the supply chains of everything from semiconductors to essential minerals, the G7 issued a statement setting out a common strategy for future relations with the world’s second largest economy.
They warned that countries that try to weaponize trade will face “consequences,” signaling Beijing about the practices Washington says amount to economic bullying.
“We are not going to disengage or close in on ourselves. At the same time, we recognize that economic resilience requires risk reduction and diversification,” they said. “A growing China that meets international standards would be in the global interest.”
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Saturday that the decisions made by the G7 showed that they were committed to what he called the “double containment” of Russia and China.
“The task was set loudly and openly: to defeat Russia on the battlefield, but not to stop there, but to eliminate it as a geopolitical competitor,” Lavrov said.
A Chinese Foreign Ministry statement accused the G7 of attacking China and interfering in its internal affairs, including Taiwan. He also noted that he had filed serious protests with Japan, the host of the summit.
The aim of the summit is to reach a consensus among the world’s richest democracies on other issues, both political and economic.
The G7 acknowledged differences on how to manage the rapid development of artificial intelligence technology, stating that “the common vision and goal of trustworthy AI may vary” but calling for consensus on global technical standards.
Although they reaffirmed current net-zero emissions targets in the fight against climate change, they stated in their statement that investment in the gas sector could be appropriated temporarily while countries phase out their dependence on Russian energy.
A month ago, a statement after an earlier G7 meeting said that fossil fuel subsidies were “inconsistent” with the objectives of the Paris Agreement on climate change.
“Given the urgent need to phase out fossil fuels, what leaders have put on the table represents an endorsement of the new fossil fuel,” Tracy Carty, global climate policy expert at Greenpeace International, said in a statement. (Reporting by Katya Golubkova and John Irish, Jeff Mason, Sakura Murakami, Andreas Rinke, Kentaro Sugiyama and Trevor Hunnicutt in Hiroshima; Kantaro Komiya and Chang-Ran Kim in Tokyo; Writing by David Dolan and Mark John; Editing in Spanish by Manuel Farías )
Source: Ambito
