G7 leaders gather in Italy to discuss Ukraine aid, China’s support for Russia

From frozen Russian assets and boosting support for Ukraine to Middle East peace and growing West-China tensions, G7 leaders will have their work cut out when they gather in southern Italy from Thursday (13 June).

When leaders of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States meet in the luxury resort of Borgo Egnazia in Puglia, some 60 kilometres away from Bari, security will be extremely tight, with the venue located at a distance from protesters and media.

It could be the last G7 summit for several participants, with US President Joe Biden facing a presidential election in November and UK’s Prime Minister Rishi Sunak expected to lose the parliamentary election in early July.

France’s President Emmanuel Macron is bracing for snap legislative elections he called after poor results in the European elections last weekend, while Germany Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s ruling coalition also suffered painful losses at the hands of the far-right.

Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, the summit’s host, is by contrast emboldened by the results of her far-right Fratelli d‘Italia party, which came out top in the domestic vote.

While not officially on the agenda, the summit will feature private conversations between the leaders of the EU’s three biggest economies, for a first stab at the division of the EU’s top jobs ahead of an informal dinner on the matter next week.

Ukraine centre-stage

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will attend a discussion on Thursday on Russia’s war against his country, where he will again press for more help from Western allies.

G7 leaders hope to agree on a deal on a plan to use the windfall profits from the interest on €300 billion of immobilised Russian central bank assets to provide Ukraine with a large up-front loan and secure Kyiv’s financing for 2025.

Eurozone finance ministers discussed the issue earlier this week, but due to its sensitivity, it was decided more talks were needed after the G7 meeting.

The idea is to use the profits as collateral for a loan of up to $50 billion, but there is still debate over who would issue the debt as well as what would happen if the assets would be unfrozen at a certain stage in the future.

Biden is expected to press his G7 counterparts to agree to the innovative plan, but on the eve of the summit, it caused a rift between the US and European governments.

G7 leaders were also expected to announce new sanctions and export controls against Russia, targeting entities and networks that help President Vladimir Putin fight the war in Ukraine, diplomatic sources with knowledge of the matter said.

Washington plans to widen its sanctions on the sale of semiconductor chips and other goods to Russia, with the goal of targeting third-party sellers in China, they added.

“We’re going to continue to drive up costs for the Russian war machine,” White House spokesman John Kirby told reporters on Tuesday (11 June).

As for the EU’s 14th sanctions package against Russia, EU27 ambassadors meeting in Brussels on Wednesday (12 June) could not seal a deal in time for the G7 summit as was initially expected. Another discussion is expected to take place on Friday (14 June).

Diplomatic efforts

With Ukraine and Gaza likely to dominate the agenda, Meloni has also invited around a dozen non-G7 leaders to attend an “outreach session” on Friday afternoon.

Invitees include the leaders of India, South Africa, Brazil, Argentina, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Algeria, Kenya and Mauritania.

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who holds the G20 presidency, Argentina’s President Javier Milei, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, and representatives from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank have also been invited.

“[The summit] will be an opportunity to broaden and deepen friendships and alliances with some important medium-sized powers that the West would like to disengage from the Chinese or Russian sphere,“ Arturo Varvelli, head of ECFR Rome think tank, told Euractiv.

The presence of non-G7 leaders, especially from the Global South, “could be symbolic of how the G7 could be progressively transformed into a control room in relations with these powers“, Varvelli said.

The sessions will end on Friday, with Zelenskyy and some other leaders heading to the Ukraine Peace Summit in Switzerland (15-16 June).

At the same time, Biden is expected to brief his G7 counterparts on Washington’s diplomacy efforts in the past months to broker a potential ceasefire in the Gaza-Israel war, now in its ninth month.

G7 leaders said in a statement last week they “fully endorse and will stand behind the comprehensive” ceasefire and hostage release deal for the Gaza war outlined by Biden, and called on Hamas to accept it.

Hamas formally responded to the proposal on Tuesday. Israel said the response was tantamount to a rejection while a Hamas official said the Palestinian group had merely reiterated longstanding demands not met by the current plan.

”If a truce agreement between Israel and Hamas could actually be closed in the next few days, the G7 would represent a particularly successful moment,” Varvelli told Euractiv.

A unanimous G7 statement on the need for Israel’s military action to end as soon as possible, and for a new commitment to a security architecture to guarantee Israel itself and the existence and reconstruction of a Palestinian state to emerge at the same time, would make the G7 „more courageous than the recent past“.

Italy’s migration focus

As migration and relations with Africa are two summit priorities for Meloni – who has made African development a central theme of Rome’s year-long G7 presidency through the so-called Mattei Plan – invitees also include leaders from Kenya, Algeria, and the African Union.

Meloni is expected to get the broader G7 group on board with the plan, which aims to position Italy as a major energy hub between Europe and the African continent.

However, Italian efforts in Africa have been impacted by a series of coups d’etat there, as European influence slowly wanes in favour of increased Russian presence.

China on their minds

While the G7 club of wealthy nations is widely seen as a political forum of largely like-minded democracies, their economic weight has stuttered in recent years. Without China at the table, some question the format’s relevance.

The US expected to strongly push its Western partners to include in the final statement the group’s concern over China’s industrial overcapacity.

The EU announced on Wednesday extra tariffs of up to 38% on Chinese electric car imports from next month, unless Brussels and Beijing can resolve the issue.

G7 leaders are also expected to call on China to stop enabling and sustaining Russia’s war against Ukraine, according to an early draft statement, which is still under negotiation.

“China’s ongoing support for Russia’s defense industrial base has significant and broad-based security implications,” the draft statement said.

[Edited by Zoran Radosavljevic]

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