G7 presents itself split over Russia

G7 summit

G7 presents itself split over Russia

US President Trump starts the G7 summit with a provocation of his European allies. Their hopes of more pressure on Putin will miss a damper at the start.

At the beginning of the G7 summit in Canada, US President Donald Trump and his European allies are presented in their attitude towards Russia. While Trump regretted the exclusion of Russia from the group of leading business powers as “big mistakes” before the first work meeting, the Europeans urged harder sanctions to stop President Vladimir Putin’s war machine. Whether the G7 members can at least come to a common denominator at the war between Israel and Iran was still completely open at the start of the two-day consultations against the backdrop of the Canadian Rocky Mountains.

Trump’s statements about Russia can only be seen as a provocation by the Europeans. Putin was thrown out of the G8 at the time after the Annexion of the Ukrainian Crimea. Since then, his return has been considered unthinkable to the Europeans – especially after the invasion of Ukraine 2022.

Trump, on the other hand, said at a meeting with the Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney: “I think there would be no war if Russia was there.” It makes things much more difficult that Putin is no longer at the table.

Putin was very insulted when he was banished from the round, Trump said. “The way I would be, the way they were, the way everyone would be.” The Kremlin boss therefore speaks to anyone except with him, Trump emphasized. At the moment it is not the right time to resume Russia because too much has happened in the meantime, he emphasized. But the exclusion at the time was wrong.

Trump had often referred to Russia as a mistake in the past and temporarily advertised the country for the country’s resumption. He recently refrained from that. At the request of a reporter, whether China should be included in the group as one of the largest economies in the world, Trump replied that this was “not a bad idea”.

So far, the G7, as a community of values ​​of the great democracies of western characteristics, derived its authorization from delimitation to autocratia such as China and Russia.

Trump also made his sympathy clear for Putin in another way. In an interview by the television station ABC, he said that he could imagine Putin as an intermediary in the war between Israel and Iran: “I would be open to it.”

Chancellor Friedrich Merz, for whom the summit in Canadian Kananaskis is the first major test at an international meeting, held against it. “I personally do not see that the Russian president could play a mediating role in this conflict,” he said. Instead, Putin should end his war against Ukraine. “When Putin ends this war, he has done the necessary and the right thing at the scene of the world, which at the moment complains to us the most. I would very much welcome it.”

Merz had actually went into the summit confidently and had said before his departure that despite all the differences, he hoped for a signal of unity. Even before the first working session on the situation of the global economy, he met Trump for 20 minutes to explore similarities. It was the second conversation within two weeks after Merz “inaugural visit to Washington.