G7 pledges to stand with Ukraine ‘for as long as it takes’
The G7 has published a statement on Ukraine. Here are the main lines:
- The G7 “will continue to provide financial, humanitarian, military and diplomatic support and stand with Ukraine for as long as it takes”.
- A reiteration of condemnation on Russia’s “unjustified use of nuclear rhetoric”.
- Ukraine must decide on its future peace settlement, “free from external pressure or influence”.
- Concern after the announcement by Russia that it could transfer missiles with nuclear capabilities to Belarus.
- Efforts will continue to provide Ukraine with military and defence equipment.
- The G7 is ready to reach arrangements with interested countries and Ukraine on sustained security commitments.
- Calls for the “immediate return” of Ukrainian nationals taken by force to Russia without their consent.
- Pledge to provide “safe passage” for Ukrainian nationals and to streamline immigration and visas.
- No impunity for war crimes and other atrocities.
- Russia must cease attacks on agricultural infrastructure and stop blocking shipping routes.
- Russia bears “enormous responsibility” for global food insecurity.
- G7 pledges “coordinated initiatives” that promote global food security.
Zelenskiy tells G7 not to let Ukraine conflict ‘drag on over winter’
Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskiy is understood to have told G7 leaders not to let the conflict in his country “drag on over winter”, Reuters reports.
He told the leaders gathered in Germany at a private meeting held via video link that “if Ukraine wins you all win”.
And in a sign he was not willing to back down and accept a peace deal that gave up swathes of Ukraine to Russia, the president said: “We will only negotiate from a position of strength.”
Reuters has also reported that a European official said Zelenskiy asked for anti-aircraft defence systems, more sanctions on Russia and security guarantees.
Reuters has a couple of stories on how western retailers withdrawing from Russia due to the Ukraine conflict is impacting consumers and the fashion industry.
Scores of Western designer labels have quit Russia as part of a backlash against Moscow’s decision to send troops into Ukraine, leaving their domestic competitors to take centre-stage.
At the annual Moscow Fashion Week, which showcases the work of Russian designers, industry professionals said seizing that opportunity would not be easy.
Yulia Lavrichenko, a fashion stylist taking part in the event last week said:
We need to develop the production of fabrics because our fabrics and accessories are all imported.
Unfortunately, our designers are suffering from this for the time being.
Even Russian couturiers rely heavily on Italy to provide the exclusive materials that go into clothing their wealthy clientele.
While China, Bangladesh, Belarus and Turkey all continue to provide mass-market clothes and materials to Russia, Italy is taking part in European Union sanctions that make trade at the luxury end very difficult.
Olga Sinitsyna, whose brand SCORA designs hats and accessories, said her business was just emerging from the shock of the pandemic when Russia’s military campaign began, sending the rouble tumbling and import prices skyrocketing.
The rouble has since bounced back, “but logistics are 10 times more expensive”, she said, adding that she had been left with no choice but to increase her prices.
She said:
You have to understand that everything you see here is not made from Russian raw materials.
This, of course, affects the cost … But here the choice is either you do it – or you cry and do nothing. I choose to do it.
Meanwhile, shoppers were greeted with empty shelves and prices discounted by as much as 70% at visited Decathlon stores in Russia over the weekend before the French sports equipment retailer closed its stores on Monday, hampered by supply constraints.
Scores of Western brands have left Russia following a backlash against its military incursion into Ukraine, with McDonald’s, IKEA and Renault among the more high-profile. Others have reported struggles with logistics and supply chains amid Western economic and financial sanctions.
Here’s the full report on the statement Russia’s defence ministry addressing Sunday’s missile strike in Kyiv.
Russia’s defence ministry said that a missile hitting a Kyiv residential building over the weekend could have been the result of a failure of Ukraine’s air defence system.
Ukraine said Russia struck the capital Kyiv for the first time in weeks over the weekend, with US President Joe Biden saying the attacks were more evidence of Russia’s “barbarism” in its offensive against Ukraine.
In a statement, the Russian defence ministry said it believes a Ukrainian Buk missile system intercepted a S-300 air defence missile which then “fell down to a residential building”.
Russia said all four of its missiles launched against an arms factory in Kyiv hit their target.
Moscow has repeatedly denied targeting civilian areas
Owner of Mariupol steelworks files lawsuit against Russia
Ukraine’s richest man has filed a lawsuit against Russia at Europe’s top human rights court on Monday, seeking compensation over what he has said are billions of dollars in business losses since Russia’s invasion.
Reuters reports:
Rinat Akhmetov, owner of the Azovstal steelworks in the city of Mariupol where Ukrainian fighters defied weeks of Russian bombardment, sued Russia for “grievous violations of his property rights” at the European Court of Human Rights, his System Capital Management (SCM) holding company said.
It said Akhmetov was also seeking a court order “preventing Russia from engaging in further blockading, looting, diversion and destruction of grain and steel” produced by his companies.
SCM quoted Akhmetov as saying:
Evil cannot go unpunished. Russia’s crimes against Ukraine and our people are egregious, and those guilty of them must be held liable.
The looting of Ukraine*s export commodities, including grain and steel, has already resulted in higher prices and people dying of hunger worldwide. These barbaric actions must be stopped, and Russia must pay in full.
Asked about the suit, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia was no longer under the jurisdiction of the European Court of Human Rights.
Nato diplomats are wrestling over how to tackle China’s deepening ties with Russia following Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, Reuters reports.
Both a summit of the G7 rich industrial democracies now underway in Germany and a Nato summit to follow will examine what is seen as the growing inclination of China to flex its geopolitical muscle and coercive economic might abroad.
The new strategic concept to be endorsed at the Nato summit in Madrid on Wednesday and Thursday is the bloc’s first in the decade and will address increasing threats posed by Russia and, for the first time, China, the world’s second largest economy, US officials said last week.
A White House official voiced confidence on Sunday that the document would include “strong” language on China, but said the negotiations were continuing ahead of the Nato summit in Madrid on June 29-30.
At the Group of Seven summit on Monday, US National Security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters that NATO’s strategy paper would “speak in ways that are unprecedented about the challenge that China poses”.
Negotiators are in addition fine-tuning how to describe the relationship between China and Russia, with the Czech Republic and Hungary strongly opposed to the phrase “strategic convergence” to define it, one of the diplomats said.
Interfax reports that Russian Defence Ministry confirms Kyiv strike
A Reuters snap is reporting that the Russian Defence Ministry has told Interfax that Russian forces hit the factory of a missile-building corporate, named Artem, in Kyiv on Sunday.
More to follow.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy meets with G7 leaders
Patrick Wintour
The Guardian’s diplomatic correspondent, Patrick Wintour, has the full story on the meeting between the Ukrainian president and G7 leaders via video.
US government sources briefed that Washington plans to announce as soon as this week that it has bought a Norwegian advanced surface-to-air missile defence system for Ukraine,
The announcement of the Nasams purchase will meet one of the key requests from Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who has been warning his key cities are defenceless against Russian missile strikes including those that rained down on the capital, Kyiv, on Sunday.
Zelenskiy’s meeting with the G7 leaders was not shown to the public – he could be seen on a television screen next to the round table where the leaders sat at the summit venue – but in his overnight address to the Ukrainian people he said the country needed a powerful, modern and fully effective air defence system that can ensure complete protection against such missiles.
The air defence system will be one of many pledges of military support including artillery ammunition due to be given to Ukraine either at the German-chaired G7 summit in Bavaria, or at the subsequent Nato defence summit in Madrid.
A US official said G7 leaders were set to pursue a price cap on Moscow’s oil revenues and raise new tariffs on Russian goods.
G7 pledges to stand with Ukraine ‘for as long as it takes’
The G7 has published a statement on Ukraine. Here are the main lines:
- The G7 “will continue to provide financial, humanitarian, military and diplomatic support and stand with Ukraine for as long as it takes”.
- A reiteration of condemnation on Russia’s “unjustified use of nuclear rhetoric”.
- Ukraine must decide on its future peace settlement, “free from external pressure or influence”.
- Concern after the announcement by Russia that it could transfer missiles with nuclear capabilities to Belarus.
- Efforts will continue to provide Ukraine with military and defence equipment.
- The G7 is ready to reach arrangements with interested countries and Ukraine on sustained security commitments.
- Calls for the “immediate return” of Ukrainian nationals taken by force to Russia without their consent.
- Pledge to provide “safe passage” for Ukrainian nationals and to streamline immigration and visas.
- No impunity for war crimes and other atrocities.
- Russia must cease attacks on agricultural infrastructure and stop blocking shipping routes.
- Russia bears “enormous responsibility” for global food insecurity.
- G7 pledges “coordinated initiatives” that promote global food security.
Russia imposes sanctions on 43 Canadian citizens
Russia has imposed sanctions on 43 Canadian citizens, barring them from entering the country in a tit-for-tat response to western sanctions on Moscow.
The list, published by the foreign ministry, included the chairperson of Canada’s governing Liberal party, Suzanne Cowan, and the former governor of the Bank of England and Bank of Canada, Mark Carney.
In April, Moscow imposed sanctions on 61 Canadian officials and journalists. It has barred dozens of other western politicians, journalists and business figures from entering Russia.
Today so far …
- Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskiy has virtually addressed the meeting of world leaders at the G7 summit in Germany. He told them he wants the war to be over by the end of the year before winter sets in, and asked for anti-aircraft defence systems, further sanctions on Russia and security guarantees, as well as help to export grain from Ukraine and for reconstruction aid.
- Russian-backed separatists said they were pushing into Lysychansk, the last major city still held by Ukrainian troops in eastern Luhansk province. Lysychansk’s twin city of Sievierodonetsk fell on Saturday in a victory for Moscow’s campaign to seize the eastern provinces of Luhansk and Donetsk on behalf of pro-Russian separatists. Serhai Haidai, Ukraine’s governor of Luhansk, has called on civilians to evacuate Lysychansk, saying that the situation is “very difficult”.
- Russia stepped up airstrikes on Ukraine over the weekend, including on the capital Kyiv, while the strategic eastern city of Sievierodonetsk fell to pro-Russian forces. There had been no major strikes on Kyiv since early June.
- Zelenskiy said a wounded seven-year-old girl was pulled from the rubble of a nine-storey apartment block in Kyiv. The girl’s father was killed in the strike, he said. “She was not threatened by anything in our country. She was completely safe, until Russia itself decided that everything was equally hostile to them now – women, children, kindergartens, houses, hospitals, railways,” Zelenskiy said in his nightly address.
- A 21-year-old woman and a 57-year-old woman died in the Kharkiv region as a result of Russian shelling, according to an update from the regional governor Oleh Synyehubov.
- Russia has defaulted on its foreign debt for the first time since 1998, according to reports, further alienating the country from the global financial system after sanctions imposed over its war in Ukraine. The country missed a deadline of Sunday night to meet a 30-day grace period on interest payments of $100m on two Eurobonds originally due on 27 May, Bloomberg reported. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Russia had made the bond payments due in May but the fact they had been blocked by Euroclear because of western sanctions on Russia was “not our problem”.
- UK prime minister Boris Johnson has reiterated his warnings at the G7 summit about “Ukraine fatigue”, while insisting that he believes the gathering of world leaders will remain united on the issue. In an interview, Johnson said there had been concern about “the anxieties of other countries around the world about the continuing war, the effect on food prices, on energy prices”.
- UK environment secretary George Eustice has said the UK is supporting Ukrainian attempts to form a land bridge to facilitate the export of grain from Ukraine. He also said the UK was investing £1.5m in determining the origins of grain supplies to prevent stolen Ukrainian grain reaching world markets.
- The US is likely to announce this week the purchase of an advanced medium- to long-range surface-to-air missile defence system for Ukraine. Washington is also expected to announce other security assistance for Ukraine, including additional artillery ammunition and counter-battery radars to address needs expressed by the Ukrainian military.
- Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, said G7 countries should respond to the latest missile strikes by imposing further sanctions on Russia and providing more heavy weapons to Ukraine.
- Zelenskiy urged Belarusians to stand in solidarity with Ukraine. “Russian leadership wants to drag you into the Ukraine-Russian war because it doesn’t care about your lives. But you aren’t slaves and can decide your destiny yourself,” Zelenskiy said in a video address to Belarusians.
- The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, will visit two small former Soviet states in central Asia this week, Russian state television reported on Sunday, in what would be the Russian leader’s first known trip abroad since ordering the invasion of Ukraine. Putin will visit Tajikistan and Turkmenistan and then meet the Indonesian president, Joko Widodo, for talks in Moscow, the report on Rossiya 1 television station said.
- The UN Human Rights division in Ukraine said on Sunday that since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February, it has “received hundreds of allegations of torture and ill-treatment, including conflict-related sexual violence”. “People were kept tied and blindfolded for several days, beaten, subjected to mock executions, put in a closed metal box, forced to sing or shout glorifying slogans, provided with no or scarce food or water, and held in overcrowded rooms with no sanitation,” the UN human rights monitoring mission in Ukraine said.
Reuters has a little more detail on what Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy apparently told G7 leaders – that he wants the war to be ended by the end of the year before winter sets in. That is according to diplomatic sources. There is yet to be any read-out of what Zelenskiy said from the Ukrainian side.
Kremlin: ‘not our problem’ if Russian bond payments blocked by western sanctions
The Kremlin has rejected claims that it has defaulted on its external debt for the first time since 1998.
Reuters reports that during his regular daily call with reporters, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Russia made bond payments due in May but the fact they had been blocked by Euroclear because of western sanctions on Russia was “not our problem”.
Here are some of the latest images to be sent to us from Ukraine over the newswires.
We will not be getting a full video release from the G7 of the address given by Volodymyr Zelenskiy this morning, but Reuters is carrying a first read-out, which it attributes to “a European official speaking on condition of anonymity”.
They say that Zelenskiy asked for anti-aircraft defence systems, further sanctions on Russia and security guarantees, as well as help to export grain from Ukraine and for reconstruction aid.
Peter Walker
UK prime minister Boris Johnson has reiterated his warnings at the G7 summit about “Ukraine fatigue”, while insisting that he believes the gathering of world leaders will remain united on the issue.
In an interview with BBC News, Johnson said there had been concern about “the anxieties of other countries around the world about the continuing war, the effect on food prices, on energy prices”.
He continued: “And what’s really struck me in the last couple of days has been the amazing consistency of our resolve, the continuing unity of the G7 – that has really shone through in the conversations.
“I think there’s a reason for that. The logic of the position is still so clear – there is no deal that President Zelenskiy can really do. In those circumstances, the G7 supporters of Ukraine around the world have to continue to help the Ukrainians to rebuild their economy, to get their grain out. And of course, we have to help them to protect themselves. And that’s what we’re going to continue to do.”
Zelenskiy is to address the G7 virtually on Monday while Johnson, for whom the summit is something of a respite from political woes at home, will push the same message again at the Nato summit in Madrid, which begins on Wednesday.
Regional governor calls for civilians to evacuate Lysychansk
Serhai Haidai, Ukraine’s governor of Luhansk, has called on civilians to evacuate the eastern Ukrainian city, saying that the situation is “very difficult”.
He posted to Telegram:
Dear residents of Lysychansk city territorial community and their relatives. Due to the real threat to life and health, we call for an evacuation immediately. The situation in the city is very difficult. Save yourself and your loved ones. Take care of the children. Be sure that you will be taken care of in the evacuation cities on the territory of Ukraine.
