G7 Leaders pledge to stand firmly with Ukraine
Newslooks-
Leaders of the Group of Seven industrial powers have pledged after a videoconference with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy that they “will stand firmly with Ukraine for as long as it takes.”
The leaders said in a statement after Tuesday’s virtual meeting that they had reassured Zelenskyy they are “undeterred and steadfast in our commitment to providing the support Ukraine needs to uphold its sovereignty and territorial integrity.”
They said they will continue to provide financial, humanitarian, military, diplomatic and legal support to Kyiv, and that they are committed to supporting Ukraine in meeting its “winter preparedness needs.”
The G-7 leaders condemned this week’s barrage of Russian missile strikes against cities across Ukraine and said that “indiscriminate attacks on innocent civilian populations constitute a war crime.”
They said: “We will hold President (Vladimir) Putin and those responsible to account.”
The G-7 is made up of the U.S., Germany, Britain, France, Italy, Canada and Japan. Germany currently chairs the group.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz says he plans to discuss how to bring down soaring fossil fuel prices with his counterparts in the Group of Seven industrial powers.
Scholz told a conference of Germany’s machinery industry Tuesday that “the very first task must be to ensure that the prices for fossil resources, for gas, for oil and coal come back down.” But he noted that can’t be done unilaterally.
Scholz said he plans to bring up “mutual responsibility,” particularly on gas prices, in all his international talks — including at a videoconference of G-7 leaders planned later Tuesday.
He said that “we need a negotiated process in which prices sink to a sensible level again.” Scholz said that it was the same idea that led to the foundation of the G-7 in the 1970s.
The head of Britain’s cyberintelligence service, GCHQ, has urged caution over talk about potential use of nuclear weapons.
Jeremy Fleming told the BBC on Tuesday: “I think any talk of nuclear weapons is very dangerous, and we need to be very careful about how we’re talking about that.”
He said his agency would “hope that we would see indicators if (Russia) started to go down that path” – suggesting GCHQ has not seen any such indicators so far.
He added that “they (Russia) are staying within the doctrine that we understand for their use, including for nuclear weapons.”
Officials in different parts of Ukraine have reported explosions, drone strikes and missile strikes by Russian forces.
Lviv governor Maksym Kozytskyi said three explosions shook two energy facilities in the region on Tuesday. He wrote on Telegram that it wasn’t immediately clear if there were any casualties there. There were reports of new power outages in Lviv only hours after it had been restored after Monday’s attacks.
In the central Dnipropetrovsk region, Ukrainian forces on Tuesday shot down four Russian missiles, according to the region’s governor Valentyn Reznichenko.
Four more Russian missiles were downed by Ukraine’s forces in the south, as well as five drones over the Mykolaiv and the Odesa regions, Operational Command South said. The governor of the southern Mykolaiv region, Vitaliy Kim, urged local residents on Tuesday not to leave shelters as “there are enough missiles still in the air.”
Another missile was shot down in the Kyiv region, governor Oleksii Kuleba said.
Ukraine’s State Emergency Service says that 12 S-300 missiles have slammed into public facilities in Zaporizhzhia, setting off a large fire in the area.
It says that one person was killed in the attack early Tuesday.
The S-300 was originally designed as a long-range surface-to-air missile. Russia has increasingly resorted to using repurposed versions of the weapon to strike targets on the ground.
Ukraine’s State Emergencies Service says that 19 people were killed and 105 others were wounded in Monday’s Russian missile strikes across Ukraine.
It said Tuesday that critical infrastructure facilities were hit in Kyiv and 12 other regions, and 301 cities and towns were without power.
Russia on Monday retaliated for an attack on a critical bridge by unleashing its most widespread strikes against Ukraine in months. They hit at least 14 regions, from Lviv in the west to Kharkiv in the east. Many of the attacks occurred far from the war’s front lines.
A senior Russian diplomat has issued a new warning to the U.S. and its allies that their support for Ukraine could draw them into an open conflict with Russia.
Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said that Western military assistance to Kyiv, the training of Ukrainian personnel in NATO countries, and the provision of real-time satellite data allowing the Ukrainian military to designate targets for artillery strikes have “increasingly drawn Western nations into the conflict on the part of the Kyiv regime.”
He warned in remarks carried by the state RIA-Novosti news agency that “Russia will be forced to take relevant countermeasures, including asymmetrical ones.”
Ryabkov added that “Russia isn’t interested in a direct clash with the U.S. and NATO, and we hope that Washington and other Western capitals are aware of the danger of an uncontrollable escalation.”
The Kremlin is saying that the continuation of U.S. weapons supplies to Ukraine will extend the fighting and increase the damage to Ukraine.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Tuesday that “the U.S. de facto has become deeply involved.”
Asked during a conference call with reporters about U.S. President Joe Biden telling Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy that Washington has agreed to his request to provide advanced air defense systems, Peskov said that it would only exacerbate Ukraine’s condition.
He said: “It will only drag the conflict out and make it more painful for the Ukrainian side, but it will not change our goals and the end result.”
The Kremlin says Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will meet in Kazakhstan this week to discuss Ukraine and other issues.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that the two leaders will meet Thursday. He said Tuesday that the agenda will include the situation in Ukraine along with bilateral issues.
The meeting will follow Putin’s talks in Astana with the leaders of several ex-Soviet nations.
Turkey hosted talks between Russia and Ukraine in March that produced no result, and together with the U.N. co-sponsored July’s deal that allowed the resumption of Ukraine grain exports. Erdogan recently has offered to help organize peace talks between Russia and Ukraine.
