The foreign ministers of the G7 nations exceeded their differences on Friday to support the territorial integrity of Ukraine and warned Russia to follow Kyiv by accepting a stop the fire or facing possible additional sanctions.
His joint communication followed weeks of tension between the US allies. And President Donald Trump for his beginning of Western trade, safety and policy related to Ukraine.
Trump urged Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday to prevent Ukrainian troops from being expelled from the Kursk region of Russia and said there was a “very good possibility” that the war could end.
Trump posted on social networks after his envoy, Steve Witkoff, held a long meeting with Putin on Thursday night in Moscow that Trump described as “very good and productive.”
The Kremlin said that Putin had sent Trump a message about his high the fire plan, which Kyiv agreed, through Witkoff, expressing “cautious optimism” that an agreement could be reached to end the three -year conflict.
Putin said Thursday that he supported Trump's proposal in principle, but that the fighting could not stop until several crucial conditions were prepared, which increases the possibility of longer negotiations.
The Secretary of State of the United States, Marco Rubio, told journalists after the G7 meetings that there were reasons to be “cautiously optimistic” about the negotiations of Alto Fire and Peace after Putin's comments, but would not address their declared conditions.
G7 officials feared that they could not agree on a document that covers it with a touch on geopolitical issues around the world, the divisions that, they said they could have played in the hands of Russia and China.
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“When it comes to different themes, Ukraine and the Middle East, we have had sessions talking about these different topics, issues, and the goal was to keep the strong unit of G7,” Melanie Joly told journalists Melanie Joly.
The group of seven ministers of Great Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States, together with the European Union, met in the remote tourist city of La Malbaie, located in the Quebec hills, for Thursday and Friday meetings that in the past have been widely consensual.
But in the period prior to the first meeting of the G7 of the Presidency of Canada, the elaboration of an agreed final statement had been difficult to dispute the language with respect to Ukraine, the Middle East and Washington's desire of a harder writing in China.
The statement “reaffirmed its unwavering support to Ukraine to defend their territorial integrity and their right to exist, and its freedom, sovereignty and independence.”
The territorial integrity of Ukraine has been largely absent from the United States narrative since the Trump administration came to power on January 20. United States under Trump so far has not ruled out the possibility that kyiv can give territory.
The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said Friday that the issue of the territory was discussed during a meeting of Ukrainian and American officials in the Saudi city of Jeddah, but would require a difficult dialogue.
“Territorial integrity is an important element of the statement and the (reference) to the United Nations,” said EU Foreign Policy Chief Kaja Kallas, to Reuters, referring to a call for a “comprehensive, fair and lasting peace with the United Nations Charter.”
A previous text that refers to the need for security guarantees to ensure that a truce was replaced by “guarantees”, but warned Moscow to follow Kyiv to accept a high fire or face additional sanctions, including oil price limits.
“The members of the G7 asked Russia to correspond by accepting a high fire on equal terms and implementing it completely.
“They emphasized that any high fire must respect and underline the need for robust and credible security agreements to ensure that Ukraine can deter and defend themselves from any renewed act of aggression,” they said in reference to the territorial integrity of Ukraine.
British Foreign Secretary David Lammy described the declaration “very good.”
Washington had tried to impose red lines in the language around Ukraine so as not to damage his conversations with Russia and opposed a separate statement to stop the so -called shade fleet of Russia, a cloudy shipping network that eludes the sanctions, while demanding a more robust language in China.
In the end, the G7 also approved a separate statement on maritime security, including a workforce to address the shadow fleet, something that Canada had pressed.
The final statement declared the opposition of the G7 to any unilateral attempt to change the status quo through the Taiwan Strait by force or coercion, a language that will probably be encouraging to Taipei.
There had been disputes about the language with respect to Gaza and the Middle East, in particular the notion of a solution of two states for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, something that the United States resisted.
The final version did not mention a solution of two states, dropping a language that had emphasized its importance in the previous drafts of the text.
“They underwent the imperative of a political horizon for the Palestinian people, achieved through a negotiated solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that meets the legitimate needs and aspirations of peace, stability and prosperity of peoples and advances,” reading.
—It additional Global News and Reuters files