Donald Trump has displayed his disdain for the collective western values supposedly championed by the G7 group of industrialised countries by again demanding that Russia be readmitted to the group. He also said the war in Ukraine would not have happened if Moscow had been kept in the club.
Trump made his remarks in front of media, alongside Canada’s prime minister, Mark Carney, who is hosting the G7, at the start of the summit’s first round of talks.
Russia was thrown out of the G8 after it invaded Crimea in 2014, and Trump’s defence of Vladimir Putin came a day before the US president is scheduled to meet his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, on the fringes of the summit. It will be the first meeting between the two men since Pope’s Francis’s funeral in April.
Zelenskyy is pressing for a reluctant Trump to respond to Putin’s refusal to agree a 30-day ceasefire by applying sanctions on Russia that the US Senate has already approved.
Trump, however, has shown little sign of losing patience, and late on Monday said he was still waiting to see whether a deal could be reached with Moscow.
“Sanctions costs us a lot of money. It costs the US a lot of money. You are talking about billions and billions of dollars,” he said.
Earlier in the day he repeated his opinion that expelling Russia from the G8 was a “big mistake”.
“You wouldn’t have that war,” he said. “You know you have your enemy at the table, I don’t even consider, he wasn’t really an enemy at that time.”
He blamed the former Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau and Barack Obama for Putin’s expulsion.
“Obama didn’t want him, and the head of your country didn’t want him,” Trump said, naming Trudeau several times and calling the ousting a mistake.
The European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, signalled that the EU would be asking the US and other G7 member states to tighten sanctions on Russia by lowering the cap at which Russian oil can be bought from $60 a barrel to $45.
The aim is to reduce Russian revenues from oil sales. The G7 originally set up the complex price cap, so the EU needs the support of all G7 states to lower it.
Von der Leyen told reporters: “To achieve peace through strength we must put more pressure on Russia to secure a real ceasefire, to bring Russia to the negotiating table, and to end this war.
“Sanctions are critical to that end. As a result of the G7 and EU sanctions combined, for example, Russian oil and gas revenues have fallen by almost 80% since the beginning of the war.”
The EU is preparing an 18th round of sanctions heavily focused on cutting off Russia’s oil revenues.
Ahead of his meeting with Trump, Zelenskyy said: “Russia spits in the face of everything the international community is trying to do to stop this war.”
He said the latest Russian attacks on energy infrastructure came right after Putin had spoken to Trump offering to act as a mediator in the Iran-Israel crisis.
“This war could have ended long ago if the world had reacted to Russia in a principled way instead of falling for manipulation and lies,” he said.
He said that unlike Russia, Ukraine had complied with US requests not to target its opponent’s energy facilities.
Trump also gave no obvious ground on tariffs in his bilateral meeting with Carney. “I’m a tariff person,” he said. “It’s simple, it’s easy, it’s precise and it just goes very quickly.
“I think Mark has a more complex idea, but also very good.”
Trump has imposed levies on steel, aluminium, cars and other Canadian products that do not comply with the continental free trade agreement’s rules of origin.
theguardian
