Leaders of the world’s major democratic economies arrived in Germany on Sunday, beginning a week of meetings where they will be under intense pressure to do more for Ukraine in its war with Russia and stay united.
The meeting of G7 leaders in Schloss Elmau, located in the Bavarian Alps, will be followed immediately on Wednesday by a meeting of NATO powers in Madrid, at which time the Western military alliance is expected to sign a larger presence. great in the east. Europe to deter a new potential aggression from Moscow.
The aftermath of Russia’s invasion of its neighbor on February 24 has cascaded across the world economy, driving up food and fuel prices and, most importantly, inflation.
The G7’s strategy has relied heavily on sanctions to punish the regime of Russian President Vladimir Putin, but instead of paralyzing the Kremlin’s war machine, the effect has been largely mitigated because China and India took over and bought more Russian oil.
Trudeau, on the left, speaks with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, in the center, and Britta Ernst, Bradenburg’s state education minister, during an arrival ceremony at the G7 summit on Sunday. (Susan Walsh / The Associated Press)
Both India and South Africa have been invited to watch the G7 meeting. Leaders from both countries skipped this week’s Commonwealth summit.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he had already spoken to South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and hoped the message would be sent loud and clear to both countries.
“If Putin continues to believe that he can act with impunity, and not only cause horrific damage and loss of life in Ukraine, but directly cause loss of life and opportunities for people around the world, the world must continue to oppose to him”. said Saturday at the end of the Commonwealth leaders meeting in Kigali, the capital of Rwanda.
When the G7 meeting opened, Russian missiles rained down on Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine, hitting at least two residential buildings, according to the city’s mayor, attacks that many military analysts interpret as the Moscow signal to leaders of the G7.
Trudeau met with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Sunday.
“There is a lot of work to be done on climate change and Ukraine and the growth of the economy,” Trudeau said.
For his part, Johnson suggested that leaders will need to talk about the pressures each of them faces at home and how this affects what is happening on the international stage.
G7 leaders pose for a photo Sunday. From left to right: the Italian Draghi; Trudeau; French President Emmanuel Macron; Scholz from German; Biden of the USA; British Prime Minister Boris Johnson; and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida. (Paul Chiasson / The Canadian Press)
“We’ll talk about the issues that Justin mentioned,” Johnson said, “but also what’s been so encouraging about the whole crisis is the way the G7 has been unified.”
In a separate interview with Reuters, Johnson detailed the point more specifically, saying he believes “the pressure is there and the anxiety is there” to stay together.
“NATO has been solid, the G7 has been solid and we remain solid,” he said, “but to protect this unity, for it to work, you have to have really, very honest discussions about the implications of what’s going on, the pressures that feel friends and individual partners and populations, whether in terms of the costs of their energy or food or whatever. ”
Food security was already a concern before the war
One of the most pressing issues on the G7 agenda is addressing the growing food insecurity caused by the Russian blockade of Ukrainian ports and the bombing of grain terminals. Up to 500,000 metric tons of grain have been stranded in Ukraine this year, which raises world food prices.
Caitlin Welsh, director of the Global Food Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, DC, said there was already concern about food security as a result of COVID-19.
“It’s important to remember that before the war, we were seeing perhaps the highest levels of food insecurity in the world,” he said at a recent news conference.
The host country, Germany, was concerned about the growing crisis long before the pandemic and war. The last time he held the G7 presidency, he convinced other nations to commit to removing 500 million people from the developing world of hunger and malnutrition by 2030.
Throughout their stay at the Commonwealth Summit, Canadian officials have repeatedly left clues, on the merits, that Canada’s experience in storing grain in the Prades could be useful to Ukraine.
They suggested they might have more to say in the coming days.