Latest news with #G8
Canada News.Net
8 hours ago
- Politics
- Canada News.Net
G7 is unviable Kremlin
Moscow has no interest in the format as the members no longer represent the global majority, spokesperson Dmitry Peskov has said Russia has zero interest in the 'Group of Seven' (G7) format, as it is no longer viable, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov has stated. He explained that the global dominance of the countries making up the group is nearing its end. Established in the 1970s, the G7 comprised Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the US and the UK. In 1998, with Russia's inclusion the group was expanded to a G8. However, the country's membership was suspended in 2014 following Crimea's reunification with Russia, following a referendum on the peninsula. On Friday, Peskov said that "our attitude toward the [G7], it's well known. It has long since stopped being an interesting and in-demand format." According to the Kremlin spokesperson, "Russia does not consider such a format viable because global trends indicate that the G7's share in global affairs and global economy will be inexorably shrinking." The official noted that "this is not seasonal volatility," but a long-term trend. Alternative formats, such as BRICS, which comprises Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, the United Arab Emirates and Indonesia as full members, have already overtaken the G7 in terms of their combined share in global economy, Peskov argued. The presidential spokesperson's comments echoed those made at the 28th annual St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF 2025) by Maksim Oreshkin, the deputy head of President Vladimir Putin's administration, on Wednesday. "Power centers are changing. The so-called 'Big Seven', which hasn't been 'big' for a long time, is being replaced by new growth hubs," he said, pointing to the rise of countries in the Global South and East. Speaking at the G7 summit in Canada on Monday, US President Donald Trump expressed regret over the removal of Russia from the group back in 2014. "I would say that that was a mistake, because I think you wouldn't have a war right now if you had Russia in," he argued.
RTÉ News
11 hours ago
- Politics
- RTÉ News
Putin's counter-narratives and stalled talks
If you were to only listen to Russian President Vladimir Putin's account of the war in Ukraine (as many millions of Russians do), you might conclude that Russia somehow stumbled into the conflict unwittingly, almost as if it were forced to invade its neighbour. Russia's leader told reporters at this week's St Petersburg International Economic Forum that he had told former US President Joe Biden during one of their last phone conversations (clearly, just before Moscow began its full-scale invasion in February 2022), that "conflicts, especially hot conflicts, must be avoided, and that all issues should be resolved through peaceful means." It was a brazen-faced claim from the man who started the largest conventional war in Europe since World War II. Mr Putin, just like current US President Donald Trump, is running a narrative that the Biden administration was at fault for not trying to stop a war that, in truth, Russia was hell-bent on starting anyway. Since returning to the White House in January, Mr Trump has repeatedly said that the conflict is "Biden's war". Mr Trump has also repeatedly claimed that the war would not have started if he had been president. On this hypothetical point, Mr Putin, is now in agreement too. "Indeed, had Trump been the president, perhaps this conflict would not have happened. I fully acknowledge that possibility," said the Russian leader during the same press event on Thursday in St Petersburg. What Mr Putin really means is: the Biden administration opposed Russia's demands to subjugate Ukraine, whereas Mr Trump, had he been the US president in the months leading up to February 2022, would have been more likely to pressure Ukraine to give in to Russia's demands. For his part, Mr Trump blames another former US President, Barack Obama, also a Democrat, for not dealing with Russia a decade ago. At the G7 meeting in the Canadian Rockies earlier this week, he said the war in Ukraine would not have happened if Russia had still been a member of the club, or G8 as it was known. (Russia was kicked out of the G8 in 2014 after its illegal annexation of Crimea). Despite Mr Trump's claims about how he could have averted the war from starting had he been president, he has failed in his promise to end it quickly since returning to the White House in January. It was always an unrealistic pledge. To its credit, the US, aided by Turkey, managed to get both Ukraine and Russia to hold two sets of brief, but direct talks in Istanbul in May, albeit at a low diplomatic level. Getting Ukraine to the table was never an issue. As early as the second week of March, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had said his country was ready to sign up to a US proposal to a 30-day unconditional ceasefire. The barrier to any ceasefire deal has been Russia, which has repeatedly rejected the US and European-backed ceasefire proposal. Those two sets of direct talks between Russian and Ukrainian delegations last month in Istanbul have delivered large-scale prisoner exchanges, humanitarian gestures that do just about enough to keep the US engaged in the process. But otherwise, the talks are at a standstill. Russia is talking about a third set of direct talks, but the Ukrainian side say they have heard nothing from Moscow. Yesterday, at the same conference in St Petersburg, Mr Putin said, as he has done previously, that he considers Russians and Ukrainians to be "one people". "In that sense the whole of Ukraine is ours," he said. That statement shows that Russia's position has not changed since it launched the war. It still disregards Ukraine's sovereignty, although Mr Putin also says that Russia is not seeking Ukraine's capitulation. According to Ukraine's first deputy foreign minister Serhii Kyslytsia, during the second meeting in Instanbul, the head of the Russian delegation, Vladimir Medinsky, described the war as "Russians killing Russians". Mr Medinsky, an ultranationalist historian, has previously questioned the existence of the Ukrainian and Mr Putin's decision to appoint him as the head of the Russian delegation is a clear signal that Moscow has no intention to negotiate. "The talks in Istanbul have demonstrated that Russia has no interest in pursuing peace and is pursuing its maximalist demands," Peter Dickinson, a Kyiv-based editor of the Atlantic Council's Ukraine Alert, told RTÉ News. Instead of pursuing peace, Russia, emboldened by a lack of pressure from the US to end the war, is intensifying its drone and missile assaults on Ukrainian cities. Last Tuesday morning's deadly Russian drone and missile assault on Kyiv – a nine-hour assault and the largest so far this year – killed 30 people and injured more than 170. Twenty-three of the victims, a death toll that included children, were residents of a 9-storey block of flats in the city's western suburb of Solomianskyi. It was struck by a Russian missile. "I think people in Kyiv are very alarmed about the rising number of attacks," said Mr Dickinson. "There's a feeling that people are sitting ducks". This week, Mr Putin also said that he was willing to meet with Mr Zelensky during a final phase of negotiations. However, he quickly followed that statement by questioning the legitimacy of Mr Zelensky's presidency – a long-running Kremlin propaganda narrative that Mr Trump briefly bought into back in March, wrongly labelling the Ukrainian president as "a dictator without elections". Russia argues that Ukraine must hold new presidential elections given that Mr Zelensky's term as president officially ended in May 2024. It was the stuff of more counter-narrative fantasy. Mr Zelensky is a democratically elected leader whereas Russia's elections are rigged like a piece of scripted theatre. While Mr Putin continues his counter-narratives and Russia continues its attacks, Ukraine is still pursuing its strategy of calling for a ceasefire first before there is any talk over territorial issues. Mr Zelensky had arrived in the Canadian Rockies for the G7 meeting on Tuesday - the same day that Russia launched its massive drone and missile on Kyiv - hoping to get some face time with Mr Trump. But his long journey had been in vain. Mr Trump had left early to deal with the escalating situation in the Middle East, according to the White House. And so Mr Zelensky ended up meeting his European partners (plus Canada's new PM Mark Carney), just as he could have done in Europe. Mr Trump's departure may have been a coincidence but, either way, it demonstrated just how low down Ukraine features on the US president's list of priorities. "As of now, no productive talks are possible," said Oleksandr Kraiev, a Ukrainian foreign policy expert at the Ukrainian Prism thinktank in Kyiv. The West, he argues, needs to considering targeting Russia's trading partners in Asia, particularly China, with "proper second-grade sanctions" in order to pressure Moscow to stop the war. "The idea from the Ukrainian side is to find a new format that could change the pressure on Russia," said Mr Kraeiv. That new diplomatic format would need Europe to play more of a role in pressuring Russia to seriously negotiate given the Trump administration's reluctance to introduce new sanctions on Moscow. But more than a month after the leaders of France, Germany, Poland and the UK travelled to Kyiv and gave Russia a 48-hour ultimatum to agree to a ceasefire (or face new sanctions and increased military aid to Kyiv), the steam seems to have run out of European efforts to up the pressure on Russia. Mr Putin had torpedoed that ultimatum by offering direct talks in Istanbul, which Mr Trump approved. 'The Coalition of the Willing', a British and French-led initiative to shore up support for a European peace monitoring force in a post-war scenario, has gone quiet too, perhaps waiting for the outcome of this week's NATO annual summit in The Hague. Crucially, it also lacked US support. "The question now is how do you get Russia to be interested in peace," said Mr Dickinson, who believes it's "futile" to expect the US to make the breakthrough. "Now it's up to Europe to step up and take action but there is still no political will".
Canada Standard
a day ago
- Politics
- Canada Standard
G7 is unviable Kremlin
Moscow has no interest in the format as the members no longer represent the global majority, spokesperson Dmitry Peskov has said Russia has zero interest in the 'Group of Seven' (G7) format, as it is no longer viable, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov has stated. He explained that the global dominance of the countries making up the group is nearing its end. Established in the 1970s, the G7 comprised Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the US and the UK. In 1998, with Russia's inclusion the group was expanded to a G8. However, the country's membership was suspended in 2014 following Crimea's reunification with Russia, following a referendum on the peninsula. On Friday, Peskov said that "our attitude toward the [G7], it's well known. It has long since stopped being an interesting and in-demand format." According to the Kremlin spokesperson, "Russia does not consider such a format viable because global trends indicate that the G7's share in global affairs and global economy will be inexorably shrinking." The official noted that "this is not seasonal volatility," but a long-term trend. Alternative formats, such as BRICS, which comprises Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, the United Arab Emirates and Indonesia as full members, have already overtaken the G7 in terms of their combined share in global economy, Peskov argued. The presidential spokesperson's comments echoed those made at the 28th annual St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF 2025) by Maksim Oreshkin, the deputy head of President Vladimir Putin's administration, on Wednesday. "Power centers are changing. The so-called 'Big Seven', which hasn't been 'big' for a long time, is being replaced by new growth hubs," he said, pointing to the rise of countries in the Global South and East. Speaking at the G7 summit in Canada on Monday, US President Donald Trump expressed regret over the removal of Russia from the group back in 2014. "I would say that that was a mistake, because I think you wouldn't have a war right now if you had Russia in," he argued. (
Edmonton Journal
2 days ago
- Politics
- Edmonton Journal
Trump's G7 departure might have sunk round of Kananaskis golf, says course manager
Article content 'He looked at the mountains and golf course for a couple of photos and it was really, really special,' said Robinson. 'We had extraordinary weather and it really showcases our mountains.' At one point during the leaders' visit, journalists prepared to interview British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Merz at the golf course. The course's turf crew was using a blower and was asked if they could move further away to muffle the noise, said Robinson. It was then that one of that crew, who hailed from England, discovered Starmer was nearby and it was arranged for her to meet him for a chat and photos, he said. 'She said she couldn't believe she was that close to her prime minister . . . it was really special for (Starmer's) team to take the time,' said Robinson. The golf course manager is no stranger to brushes with political celebrity. During the 2002 G8 summit there, then-Canadian prime minister Jean Chretien shot four holes of golf while then-U.S. president George W. Bush took a jog on the course. But he said the passage of years has made him appreciate the chance to be part of such historic events. At the same time, he said it's a relief to have the summit in the history books and to reflect on it with satisfaction. 'After preparing for it in the last 10 months and quite intensely for the last four, to see it come together and it was quite successful is something to treasure,' said Robinson.
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Zelenskyy says he'll raise Ukraine weapons purchase with Trump at G7 Summit
WASHINGTON — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says he will press President Donald Trump to allow him to purchase additional weapons from the United States when the leaders meet at the Group of Seven summit in Canada this week. Ukrainian officials have said they are in active discussions with the United States about buying air defense systems and other weapons with military assistance that was approved under the Biden administration. Zelenskyy has raised the topic with Trump in the past and told reporters during a press conference in Austria: "One of the questions that I will discuss with President Trump during the meeting is the defense package that Ukraine is ready to buy." Group of Seven coverage: Can Trump pull off peace plans, trade deals at the G7? A primer on the Canadian summit Trump is expected to meet with Zelenskyy on June 17 to discuss Russia's assault on the country. They'll both be attending the G7 summit for the leaders of the world's most advanced economies that's underway in a remote area of the Canadian Rockies. The leaders last saw each other in late April, where they held conciliatory talks on the sidelines of Pope Francis' funeral after a fiery February exchange at the White House. The U.S. president is juggling complicated trade negotiations and several global wars while in Canada for the first of two international gatherings he's attending this month. He'll see some of the same leaders next week at a NATO summit in The Hague. Trump spoke to Russian President Vladimir Putin for more than an hour by phone on June 14 in a bit to jump start negotiations with Iran over a nuclear deal. Iran pulled out of negotiations with the United States after Israel conducted strikes on sites affiliated with its uranium enrichment program. Trump said on social media that his call with Putin was focused on that conflict. "He feels, as do I, this war in Israel-Iran should end, to which I explained, his war should also end," Trump said. Zelenskyy is one of a handful of foreign leaders who's due to receive one-on-one time this week with Trump. The president held a bilateral meeting on June 16 with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and also spoke with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz at the start of summit. The White House said Trump would meet with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum this week. Mexico is one of several nations non-G7 nations that was invited to participate. It will be the leaders' first meeting since Trump entered office. Russia was a member of the group for industrialized nations until 2014, when it was kicked out for annexing the Ukrainian territory of Crimea and turning what was then known as the G8 into the G7. Trump has pushed repeatedly for Russia to be allowed back in. He argued as he met with Carney that it was a "big mistake" and diplomacy with Putin could have prevented the Ukraine war. "You spend so much time talking about Russia, and he's no longer at the table," Trump said. "So it makes life more complicated." Contributing: Reuters This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Zelenskyy says he'll raise Ukraine weapons purchase with Trump at G7
