Zelensky left today from hiroshima after attending the two-day meeting with the US president, Joe Biden, and the other leaders of the group of the seven richest countries -Canada, Japan, France, the United Kingdom, Germany and Italy-, and with other guests.
A long-awaited bilateral between Zelenski and Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the only Latin American leader invited to the summit, finally did not come to fruition due to mutual scheduling problems, the governments of Ukraine and Brazil said.
Shortly after Zelensky’s arrival in Japan, yesterday, Russia has said it has captured the eastern city of Bakhmut, the scene of the longest and bloodiest battle since the invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022.
However, Zelensky affirmed today at the end of the summit that Russia had not yet occupied Bakhmut, after having said hours before that there was nothing left in the city and that it was already in the “hearts” of the Ukrainians.
After laying flowers at a memorial to the victims of the 1945 US atomic bombing of Hiroshima, the Ukrainian president compared that attack to the current situation in Bakhmut.
“The photos of Hiroshima remind me of Bakhmut. There is absolutely nothing alive, all the buildings are destroyed […] Absolute and total destruction,” he said. But he vowed that, like Hiroshima, Ukraine will also recover.
On Sunday, he met with Biden, who promised Kiev new shipments of arms, ammunition and armored vehicles worth some $375 million, days after allowing his allies to supply F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine.
Biden assured that Western countries that support Kiev “will not waver” in the face of the Russian offensive in Ukraine ordered by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“Putin will not break our resolve [de apoyar a Kiev] as I thought I could do,” he said, reported the AFP news agency.
“The G7 leaders invited the head of the Kiev regime, which they control, to their meeting and turned the Hiroshima event into a propaganda show,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement today.
“Under the leadership of the Anglo-Saxons, destructive initiatives are maturing that undermine global stability,” the statement added.
What was discussed at the G7 summit
Zelensky’s presence in Hiroshima put Russia’s invasion of Ukraine at the center of the G7 debates, and overshadowed other important issues, such as allied relations with China and discussions related to climate change.
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With this invitation “we have shown the unwavering solidarity of the G7 with Ukraine,” said Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, host of the summit. In successive meetings with him, Zelensky tried to rally support for a ten-point peace plan, focused on demanding that Russia withdraw from the territory.
The role of Lula Da Silva as the only Latin American representative
The Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who participated in the G7 summit as a guest, did not meet with his Ukrainian counterpart face to face due to incompatibility of the agenda, according to what Zelenski himself and the Brazilian government said.
Lula, the only Latin American representative at the summit, has always been reluctant to condemn Russia’s incursion into Ukraine, and caused some controversy last month by declaring that the United States should stop “encouraging war.”
He also condemned the “violation of Ukraine’s territorial integrity” and called for dialogue in the group’s discussions.
However, today he criticized the countries of the UN Security Council, whose permanent members are the United States, Russia, China, France and the United Kingdom, urged a reform with greater representation for emerging countries and also defended “the consolidation of the G20”.
“The permanent members carry on the long tradition of waging unauthorized wars, whether for the purposes of territorial expansion or regime change,” he said, referring to the 2003 US-led coalition invasion of Iraq.
In addition, Lula made reference to the negotiation of Argentina’s external debt with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), by assuring that the conditions imposed by the IMF “destroy” the country, and interceded on behalf of the Government of Alberto Fernández before the general director of the agency, Kristalina Georgieva.
Asked if he was disappointed not to have been able to speak directly with the Brazilian president, Zelenski replied: “I think he is the one who is disappointed.” He did meet with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who declared that India would do “everything possible” to resolve the conflict, a promise Zelensky welcomed.
Source: Ambito
