The G7 Foreign Affairs Ministers overcome their differences on Friday to return Ukraine Territorial and informed integrity Russia Follow Kyiv by accepting a ceasefire or in front of new sanctions.
Their joint press release followed weeks of tension between the American allies and President Donald Trump about his upheaval in Western trade, security and policy linked to Ukraine.
On Friday, Trump urged Russian President Vladimir Putin to spare the Ukrainian troops pushed from the Russian Kursk region and said that there was a “very good chances” that war could end.
Trump posted on social networks after his envoy, Steve Witkoff, held a long meeting with Putin Thursday evening in Moscow that Trump described as “very good and productive”.
The Kremlin said Putin had sent Trump a message on his ceasefire plan, which kyiv accepted, via Witkoff, expressing a “cautious optimism” that an agreement could be concluded to end the three-year conflict.
Putin said Thursday that he had supported Trump’s proposal in principle, but that fighting could not be interrupted until several crucial conditions were established, increasing the prospect of longer negotiations.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio told journalists after G7 meetings that there were reasons to be “prudently optimistic” on a cease-fire and peace negotiations after Putin’s remarks, but would not solve his declared conditions.
G7 officials feared that they could not agree on a global document concerning geopolitical issues around the world, divisions which, according to them, could have played in the hands of Russia and China.
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“With regard to the various problems, Ukraine and the Middle East, we had sessions to talk about these different problems, subjects, and the objective was to keep the strong G7 unit,” the Canadian Foreign Minister, Melanie Joly, told journalists.
The group of seven ministers from Great Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States, as well as the European Union, have been summoned to the tourist town distant from the Malbeie, nestled in the hills of Quebec, for meetings Thursday and Friday that, in the past, have been largely consensual.
But when approaching the first G7 meeting of the Presidency of Canada, the crafts of a agreed final declaration was difficult to argue the language concerning Ukraine, the Middle East and the desire of Washington of more difficult formulation on China.
The press release “reaffirmed their unshakable support to Ukraine by defending its territorial integrity and its right to exist, and its freedom, its sovereignty and its independence”.
The territorial integrity of Ukraine has been largely absent from the American story since the Trump administration came to power on January 20. The United States under Trump has so far not excluded the possibility that Kyiv could yield the territory.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Friday that the territory’s issue had been discussed at a meeting of Ukrainian and American officials in the Saudi city of Djeddah, but that would require difficult dialogue.
“Territorial integrity is an important element of the press release and (reference) to the United Nations,” the head of the EU foreign policy, Kaja Kallas, referred to a call for a “complete, fair and lasting peace in accordance with the United Nations Charter” told Reuters.
A previous text referring to the need for security guarantees to ensure that a truce has been replaced by “insurance”, but they warned Moscow to follow kyiv to accept a cease-fire or face new sanctions, including oil price ceilings.
“G7 members called on Russia to make the same by accepting a cease-fire for equal purposes and in the fully implementation.
“They pointed out that any ceasefire must be respected and underlined the need for robust and credible security provisions to ensure that Ukraine can dissuade and defend against any renewed act of aggression,” they said in a reference to the territorial integrity of Ukraine.
British Foreign Minister David Lammy described the declaration of “very good”.
Washington had sought to impose red lines on the language around Ukraine so as not to harm its talks with Russia and opposed a distinct declaration on the reduction of the so-called Fleet of the Shadow of Russia, a disorder maritime network that escapes sanctions, while demanding a more robust language on China.
In the end, the G7 also approved a separate declaration on maritime security, including a working group to tackle the shadow fleet, which Canada had done for.
The final press release declared the opposition of the G7 to any unilateral attempt to change the status quo through the Strait of Taiwan by force or coercion, a language which will probably be encouraging in Taipei.
There had been a struggle on language concerning Gaza and the Middle East, in particular the notion of a two-state solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which the United States resisted.
The final version did not make any mention of a solution to two states, abandoning the language which had stressed its importance in the previous versions of the text.
“They underlined the imperative of a political horizon for the Palestinian people, obtained by a solution negotiated in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict which meets the legitimate needs and aspirations of the two peoples and advances peace, stability and complete prosperity,” said the project.
– with additional Global News and Reuters files
