ELMAU
CASTLE, Germany —
World powers on Sunday agreed to ban gold exports from
Russia, kicking off a G7
meeting aimed at taking new steps to deplete Moscow’s war chest and bolster
Ukraine’s defenses.
اضافة اعلان
US President Joe Biden and his counterparts
from the world’s most industrialized nations are gathering at Elmau Castle in
the German Alps before they continue on to Madrid for talks with NATO partners.
The leaders — all men this time since the
departure from the scene late last year of
Angela Merkel — are seeking to close
ranks for Ukraine against Russia’s invasion while grappling with the
intensifying global fallout of the war.
“We have to stay together,” Biden told
Merkel’s successor Olaf Scholz, the host of the three-day gathering.
Russian President Vladimir Putin had been
hoping “that somehow NATO and the G7 would splinter”, Biden said. “But we
haven’t and we’re not going to.”
Scholz also hailed Western unity which he
said “Putin never expected”, adding that each member of the club “needs to
share responsibility” for facing the mounting challenges the war presents.
The statements of resolve came as Russia
resumed strikes on Kyiv in the first onslaught on the Ukrainian capital in
three weeks — an attack Biden condemned as “more of their barbarism”.
Looking to the summit, Ukrainian Foreign
Minister
Dmytro Kuleba urged the G7 to approve more sanctions on Moscow and
more heavy weapons for Ukraine to defeat “Russia’s sick imperialism”.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky will
make the same plea when he joins the meeting via video-link on Monday.
From soaring inflation to a looming food
crisis and energy shortages, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, now in its fifth
month, has mired the world in a series of crises.
The G7 leaders are also confronting the
looming threat of recession as well as pressures over climate change.
Seeking to turn up the heat on Moscow, the G7
announced it would outlaw imports of Russian gold. The US said gold was the
second largest export for Russia and a significant source of revenue for Putin
and his allies.
‘Weaponized
energy’
While
Western allies have hammered the
Russian economy with unprecedented sanctions,
Putin’s army has been digging in for a drawn-out war.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and
French President Emmanuel Macron said they now saw an “opportunity to turn the
tide” in Ukraine.
Johnson warned that “any attempt to settle
the conflict now will only cause enduring instability” and risked giving “Putin
license to manipulate both sovereign countries and international markets in
perpetuity”, a Downing Street spokesman said.
Seeking fresh measures to put the squeeze on
Putin, Macron urged producers to cap oil prices to limit Russian profits from
soaring energy revenues.
Paris backs a US proposal for a maximum oil
price, Macron’s office said, but added that “it would be much more powerful if
it came from the producing countries”.
John Kirby, National Security Council
spokesman at the White House, said the G7 would be seeking to increase the
costs and consequences of the war on Putin and the Russian economy.
At the same time, they will aim to minimize
“as much as possible the effect of these rising oil prices and the way (Putin)
has weaponized energy”.
The impact on the economy formed the focus of
the G7’s opening session, with Scholz citing “sinking growth rates, rising
inflation, raw material shortages and supply chain disruptions” as threats to a
post-pandemic recovery.
Systemic
rival
Scarred
by a reliance on Russian energy that has hampered several European nations
including
Germany and Italy from going all out to punish Russia, the G7 was
also warily looking at China — which it views as a systemic rival.
As the gulf separating Western allies from
Russia and China widens, the G7 sought to rally other major players to its side
with a major global infrastructure plan.
Biden announced the G7 project to rival
China’s formidable Belt and Road Initiative by raising some $600 billion to be
spent on everything from roads to harbors in poor countries.
In further outreach to the Global South,
Scholz has invited the leaders of Argentina, India, Indonesia, Senegal, and
South Africa to the Alpine summit on Monday.
While Argentina and Indonesia voted at a
crucial UN vote to condemn Russia, the other three abstained.
But all are being directly hit by a looming hunger crisis
sparked by the holdup in grain and wheat exports from Ukraine, and India for
instance has imposed restrictions on wheat exports.
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