(Hiroshima) Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is expected in person at the G7 Summit in Hiroshima, Japan, whose leaders on Friday announced new sanctions to “deprive Russia” of resources that “support its war enterprise”.
“Very important things will be decided on the spot, and therefore the presence, the presence in person of our president is absolutely essential to defend our interests,” Ukrainian Security Council Secretary Oleksiy Danilov said.
In the meantime, Volodymyr Zelensky announced on his Instagram account on Friday that he had arrived in Saudi Arabia, where he plans to speak at the Arab League summit in Jeddah and hold various bilateral talks, including with the crown prince of the petro-kingdom. -Mohammed bin Salman gas company.
He will then travel this weekend to the Japanese city that suffered the first atomic bombing in history in 1945 and has since become a world symbol of peace.
His trip is “very important”, commented a French diplomatic source.
While he was initially scheduled to intervene by videoconference, Volodomyr Zelensky, who has just completed a tour of Europe, is expected to participate in person at the summit on Sunday, on the last day. That is to say when the leaders of eight countries invited by the Japanese presidency will also be present, including major emerging countries such as Brazil, Indonesia and above all India – which maintains close military ties with Russia and refused to condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
PHOTO CARL COURT, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE ARCHIVES
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky
“We can assume that they will see each other”, “it is an opportunity” to “express themselves with as many leaders as possible”, estimated this diplomatic source, affirming that the “best spokesperson” for the cause of Ukraine, “it’s the Ukrainian president himself.
His presence in Hiroshima will be an ambivalent symbol, believes Ian Lesser, vice-president of the German Marshall Fund of the United States, an American think tank, interviewed by AFP: “It will underline the importance of the conflict” Russian-Ukrainian to defend “peace in the world, but also the risk of escalation” between nuclear powers.
Mr. Zelensky should ask the G7 for new military means to better oppose the Russian troops, before the announced counter-offensive in Kyiv: more artillery shells, more sophisticated anti-aircraft defense systems, and probably a new demand for American-made F-16s, combat aircraft which the Europeans also have “in large quantities”, recalled Mr. Lesser.
Russian diamonds “not forever”
In a joint statement released after a meeting on Ukraine on Friday, the United States, Japan, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Italy and Canada announced measures to “deprive the Russia of G7 technologies, industrial equipment and services that support its war enterprise”.
This includes restrictions on exports of goods “essential to Russia on the battlefield”, as well as the targeting of entities accused of bringing material to the front lines on its behalf.
The United Kingdom and the European Union had previously announced restrictions on their imports of Russian diamonds, an industry which brings in several billion dollars each year for Moscow.
“Russian diamonds are not forever,” quipped European Council President Charles Michel.
These sanctions show that “the G7 remains united in the face of the threat from Russia and firm in its support for Ukraine”, declared British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.
Tribute to the victims of Hiroshima
The G7 leaders also gathered Friday at the Peace Memorial Park with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, whose family and political roots are in Hiroshima.
PHOTO PROVIDED BY THE JAPANESE MINISTRY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS VIA AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
G7 leaders laid wreaths at the Peace Memorial Park in Hiroshima.
They paid tribute to the 140,000 victims of the American atomic bomb of August 6, 1945.
However, Mr. Kishida’s dream of taking the opportunity of this summit to jointly launch a strong message for nuclear disarmament has every chance of remaining a wishful thinking.
The United States, the United Kingdom and France indeed possess thousands of nuclear warheads, and the other members of the G7, including Japan, are covered by the American “nuclear umbrella”.
The summit agenda will also be dominated by China and the desire of G7 countries to diversify their supply chains to guard against the risk of “economic coercion” from Beijing.
France, however, assured that it would be “not a G7 of confrontation” but “a G7 of cooperation and the requirement with regard to China”.