Just as the G7 was underway for its first day of meetings on Sunday in the five-star hotel Schloss Elmau in the Bavarian Alps of Germany, Russia’s military pounded Kiev with a series of missile attacks, which President Joe Biden – who is attending in person – condemned as “more of their barbarism.”
Biden was asked by reporters whether he views the relatively rare Russian strikes on Ukraine’s capital as deliberately timed due to the summit, which he didn’t answer. Ukrainian officials say one person died and six were injured as a result of the attack.
“We have to stay together, because Putin has been counting on, from the beginning, that somehow NATO and the G-7 would splinter, but we haven’t and we’re not going to,” Biden said in remarks during a pre-summit meeting with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
As The Guardian previews of what’s expected to be tackled between now and Tuesday, “A price cap on Russian oil, deferral of climate change commitments, a potential famine in Africa and the further supply of weapons to Ukraine are to crowd into a meeting of G7 world leaders over the next three days held against the backdrop of the biggest geopolitical crisis since 1945.” Further, CNN’s audience has been told “Putin will be watching if they fail.”
Going into the summit, the UK’s Boris Johnson urged a united front on Ukraine amid what he called a growing war “fatigue” among the Western populace. The G7 countries which include Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and United States have Ukraine and global economic fallout from the war as top of the agenda.
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