A meeting of the G7, the informal group of some of the most important democratic and industrialized countries in the world, began in Hiroshima, Japan on Friday: it is expected that the various leaders – as has already happened in the last few meetings – will talk above all about the war in Ukraine, of sending new weapons to the Ukrainian army and imposing further sanctions against Russia.
One of the most notable issues concerns the possibility that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky will participate in person along with the other leaders on Sunday, the last day of the meeting. The news is given as almost certain by many international newspapers who have had the opportunity to speak with people involved in organizing Zelensky’s trip, who however claim that everything could be canceled even at the last moment for safety reasons. If he fails to be in Japan in person, Zelensky is already expected to speak via video link.
An eventual trip by Zelensky to Japan would be remarkable. It is not the first intercontinental journey that the Ukrainian president has made since the beginning of the war (he has already been to the United States) but it could be one of the most daring and logistically complex, if only because to reach Japan from Ukraine it is necessary to go around Russia in full.
If Zelensky really manages to participate in the G7 in person, it is likely that he will have a meeting with US President Joe Biden, and that more generally the whole event will revolve around his presence.
The countries that are part of the G7 are Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Italy, the United Kingdom and the United States. To these has been added for some time now the European Union, which is represented by the president of the Commission Ursula von der Leyen and by the president of the Council Charles Michel. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni landed in Japan on Thursday evening Italian time and she attended a meeting with Fumio Kishida, the Japanese prime minister.
In addition to the seven countries plus the European Union, it has for some time been customary for the host country (in this case Japan) to invite representatives of other countries at its discretion to participate in the G7 meetings: it is a way of involving in the discussions and in the activities countries in which the West may have some kind of interest. This year, the list of invited countries is quite impressive: it includes Australia, South Korea, Vietnam, Indonesia, the Comoros (an African island state representing the African Union) and the Cook Islands (representing the Pacific).
Above all, among the guests there are also Brazil and India, two of the largest democratic countries in the world, which the West has been trying to involve for some time in supporting the Ukrainian resistance.
One of the main topics of the G7 meetings are the sanctions against Russia: in a communicated signed by all seven G7 leaders, it states that the group’s goal is to “expand the actions” necessary to prevent Russia from “rebuilding its war arsenal”, operating above all in the field of exports of machinery, raw materials and technology. All sanctions – as has always happened up to now – will exclude agricultural, pharmaceutical and humanitarian products.
The United States and the United Kingdom would also like to increase both the number of sanctioned subjects (the US government would have a list with 300 new names) and to extend the economic sectors to which these sanctions are applied. For example, there has been a lot of talk about the diamond sector, in which Russia has large interests and which has hardly been affected by the economic sanctions of recent months, mainly due to the opposition of the large European diamond markets.
G7 leaders also cited new financial aid to Ukraine, both to support the war effort and to rebuild the country: figures have not yet been released.
It will be more complicated to talk about sending new weapons to Ukraine, an issue on which there is less unity among the G7 countries: in recent days a discussion developed on the possibility of sending F-16 fighters to the Ukrainian army for the first time, which could have a significant impact on the war. However, many countries, including the United States, fear that supplying Western fighters to Ukraine would be seen by Russia as too provocative towards it, and would involve too much involvement in the war.