KANANASKIS, Alta. — The G7 group of world leaders emerged from its Canadian summit without a joint statement against Russia, showing that achieving unity is a lot harder than it looks.
Prime Minister Mark Carney and other world leaders around the table could not persuade Trump, before he left for Washington, to sign on to a joint declaration of support for Ukraine that contained “strong language” that Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Britain, Japan and the European Union all wanted to exert pressure on Russia, according to a Canadian official who briefed reporters Tuesday afternoon before Carney addressed a closing news conference.
However Carney later downplayed the absence of a joint G7 declaration on Ukraine, and denied there was any split or disagreement in the G7 ranks. He suggested that the leaders simply agreed that, before Trump took off, the more urgent priority to agree upon was a joint declaration on Iran, and there were no insurmountable differences.
That didn’t align with information provided earlier to Canadian reporters during a background briefing with a senior government official who said the American side wanted to “water down” a Ukraine declaration because it would impede U.S. ability to broker an end to the Russia-Ukraine war. The official briefed reporters on condition they not be identified in order to discuss the dynamic behind closed doors, and was only authorized to provide limited details.
Late Tuesday, after Carney spoke, the PMO sought to clarify the record. PMO spokesperson Emily Williams in a statement to reporters said that Canada had not proposed a joint G7 document as such, only a “chair’s summary” to other delegations.
“No proposed joint statement regarding Ukraine was distributed. Canada’s intention was always for the important language to be a part of the G7 Chairs’ Summary Statement, and it was.”
Another G7 source said the fault lines on any Ukraine statement were clear as early as last Friday.
However Carney, visibly relaxed if not relieved following what he described as a successful summit, said “I was in the room” and described a successful two days of meetings that produced six other joint statements supported by the G7 leaders and others.
On Ukraine, he pointed to a “chair’s summary” that hadn’t by then been published which included a single paragraph on Ukraine that Carney insisted represented G7 unity, reading out from it to dispute media questions on “the minutiae” of the Ukraine discussion.
“G7 Leaders expressed support for President Trump’s efforts to achieve a just and lasting peace in Ukraine,” it read. “They recognized that Ukraine has committed to an unconditional ceasefire, and they agreed that Russia must do the same,” the statement continued. It said they are “resolute in exploring all options to maximize pressure on Russia, including financial sanctions.”
Carney’s summary of where they aligned — which did not state specific support for more sanctions, more military equipment or seizure of frozen Russian assets — comes at a time when Russia is intensifying its attacks on Ukraine’s civilian population and the war-torn country’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy came to Kananaskis to rally more support.
Zelenskyy left Wednesday, without ever seeing Trump, cancelling his own news conference.
Nevertheless, the G7 did land on an agreed joint statement on Iran-Israel hostilities that the U.S. could live with.
It supported a call for de-escalation of conflict in the Middle East region but did not specify the need to de-escalate the spiralling Iran-Israel crisis. It supported Israel’s right to defend itself and identified Iran as “the principal source of regional instability and terror.”
There were other divides on display.
Trump condemned the G7 decision in 2014 to evict Russia from the G8’s ranks, after President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine and annexed the Crimea peninsula. “A big mistake,” Trump said as Carney stood silently by him Monday.
In response to reporter questions Tuesday, Carney dismissed any concern that Putin may have been offended by his ouster. “It was personally offensive, to put it mildly, to the citizens of Ukraine and the inhabitants of Crimea, when Russia invaded in 2014 which was the cause of their ejection from the G8,” Carney said.
A huge divide between Trump and the G7, and other international leaders invited to the summit, exists over Trump’s global tariffs. Several leaders hoped to negotiate bilateral deals here with Trump to ease the hit, but only a handful — Canada, Japan, the U.K. and the EU — even got a chance to talk directly with the president before he took off.
Trump’s delegates, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, U.S. trade representative Jamieson Greer, and another White House official remained behind to take part in the summit’s meetings with Zelenskyy.
French President Emmanuel Macron told the Star Trump’s absence did not detract from the discussions on Ukraine with Zelenskyy. He said the G7 is united in a desire to find a lasting and enforceable end to the war.
“It is in the strategic American interest to continue this discussion with us and to do it as we discussed this morning: sanctions, military support for Ukraine to lead Russia to return to the table — which is, by the way, what President Trump has been asking for since February — a ceasefire, and negotiations for a lasting peace.”
How they reach that goal is where they differ.
Many G7 leaders want more muscular sanctions on Russia and more military equipment sent into Ukraine. Canada announced new measures Tuesday on those fronts, as did Britain. Both increased sanctions on individuals and entities, and targeted Russia’s “shadow fleet” of ships used to evade sanctions.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s sanctions package took aim at 30 targets across Russia’s financial, military and energy sectors, and targets 20 of his oil tankers, as well as the companies responsible for crewing and managing the vessels, according to a U.K. news release.
“These sanctions strike right at the heart of Putin’s war machine, choking off his ability to continue his barbaric war in Ukraine,” said Starmer. “We know that our sanctions are hitting hard, so while Putin shows total disregard for peace, we will not hesitate to keep tightening the screws.”
Zelenskyy met Carney in a bilateral meeting Tuesday after a devastating night where Russia rained down missile and drone strikes on Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital. The Ukrainian leader called it a “big tragedy,” one of the biggest attacks since the beginning of the war, with 440 drones from Russia, and 32 missiles, including ballistic missiles, saying at that point he understood 138 people were injured and 12 killed in the attack.
Carney, standing next to Zelenskyy, condemned “in the strongest terms, the latest outrage — barbarism from Russia,” adding it “underscores the importance of standing in total solidarity with Ukraine, with the Ukrainian people,” and “the importance of using maximum pressure against Russia, who has refused to come to the table.”
Canada will provide additional drones, helicopters and broader munitions, “over $2 billion worth of assistance directly to Ukraine,” said Carney. And Ottawa is dispersing the next tranche of the loan based on the frozen Russian assets, $2.3 billion to help rebuild its infrastructure and public systems., he added.
Zelenskyy, dressed in black, welcomed the aid.
“We need support from our allies,” he said, “until Russia will be ready for the peace negotiations. We are ready for … the unconditional ceasefire.”
As he wound up the summit, Carney struck a confidently cocky note, joking about the number of questions, quipping whether Trump had pegged the $71 billion tag for Canada to get in on the “Golden Dome” in Canadian or U.S. dollars, wisecracking about a G7 where “there are only, oddly, nine people in the room, because of the two extra Europe — not extra Europeans — right amount of Europeans.”
He said the summit’s direct dialogue and “strategic exchanges” were invaluable and while leaders disagreed on “a number of issues” it came from an “effort to find common solutions to some of these problems.”
Yet Carney was careful and guarded when he defended his controversial decision to invite Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, describing him as an important world leader with whom Canada had to re-engage on law enforcement issues, trade and immigration issues. But Carney refused to answer directly about whether he raised the “murder” case of Hardeep Singh Nijjar’s alleged shooting death at the direction of Indian government agents.
At the end, the G7 issued a number of other joint G7 statements which the U.S. to. They pledged co-operation and action to harness the power of artificial intelligence and quantum computing, to ramp up efforts including working with social media platforms and possible sanctions to counter migrant smuggling.
The G7 leaders condemned transnational repression, vowing to create a new digital detection “academy” to support potential targets. They agreed to address wildfires through mitigation and adaptation, construction of resilient infrastructure, to share data.
Two other statements were issued on a new a critical minerals action plan, which was also endorsed by Australia, India and South Korea, and a Kananaskis Wildfires Charter endorsed by Australia, India, Mexico, South Korea, and South Africa.
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