2023-05-20 08:16:02
HIROSHIMA: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky landed in Hiroshima (western Japan) on Saturday to attend the G7 summit, while the United States lifted its reluctance the day before to authorize future deliveries of combat aircraft to Kiev.
Mr. Zelensky arrived in Hiroshima around 3:30 p.m. local time (06:30 GMT) on board a French Republic plane, AFP journalists noted.
The G7 will bring “closer” to peace, tweeted a few minutes following his arrival in Japan the Ukrainian president, who must take part in meetings with the leaders of the G7 and other countries invited to the summit which is held until Sunday.
Mr Zelensky arrived from Saudi Arabia, where he pleaded Ukraine’s case at the Arab League summit on Friday to “certain” countries which he says are “turning a blind eye” to Russia’s invasion of his country .
In the Japanese city devastated by an American atomic bomb in 1945, the Ukrainian head of state who became a warlord will thus be able to exchange with his main allies, but also with major non-aligned emerging powers such as Brazil and especially India, which has close military ties with Russia and has refused to condemn its invasion of Ukraine.
The “best spokesperson” for the cause of Ukraine, “is the Ukrainian president himself”, estimated a French diplomatic source, while Paris provided him with a French plane to transport him to Saudi Arabia and then Japan.
Historical decision
Joe Biden “can’t wait” to “meet face-to-face” with his Ukrainian counterpart on the sidelines of the summit of the seven most industrialized democracies, his national security adviser Jake Sullivan said on Saturday. They will discuss “the practical implementation” of the US decision on combat aircraft.
Bilateral meetings of Mr. Zelensky with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and French President Emmanuel Macron in particular are also planned.
The White House said on Friday that Mr. Biden had overcome his reluctance, saying he was ready to allow other countries to supply Kiev with the fighter jets he wants, American-made F-16s. A “historic” decision, hailed the Ukrainian president.
Jake Sullivan confirmed that Washington now supports a joint initiative by its allies to train Ukrainian pilots on F-16s. During these long months of training, Westerners will decide on the schedule for the delivery of planes, their number and the countries that will provide them.
“The United Kingdom will work with the United States, the Netherlands, Belgium and Denmark to provide Ukraine with the air combat capability it needs,” said British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, also present. in Japan. Emmanuel Macron also said he was ready on Monday to provide training for Ukrainian pilots.
While his country is preparing a major counter-offensive once morest Moscow, Volodymyr Zelensky has just returned from a tour of Europe where he had once more requested these fighters.
But so far, the West, led by the United States, resisted these demands, citing the risk of escalation of the conflict, and saying that it was not a priority.
Mr. Sullivan assured that the American doctrine had “not changed”. The delivery of weapons “followed the requirements of the conflict”, he pleaded.
China, another dominant of the G7
He considered that the F-16s were part of the equipment that Kiev will need “in the future” to “be able to deter and defend once morest any Russian aggression”, beyond the immediate necessities linked to counter-terrorism. Ukrainian offensive announced for several weeks by Kiev.
The White House reiterated the US position that, through its military assistance, “the United States does not facilitate or support attacks on Russian soil.”
On Friday, the leaders of the Hiroshima summit had already announced new sanctions to “deprive Russia of G7 technologies, industrial equipment and services that support its war enterprise”.
If Mr. Zelensky has become the dominant subject of the summit, the leaders of the G7 must also agree on a common position in the face of the rise in economic, diplomatic and military power of China, once morest a backdrop of growing tensions between Washington and Beijing.
“We will work together to ensure that attempts to use economic dependencies as a weapon” are “doomed to failure” and have “consequences”, G7 leaders said in a statement released on Saturday, without however name China.
The G7 countries (United States, Japan, Germany, France, Italy, United Kingdom, Canada) want to diversify their supply chains to depend less on China in particular, and better protect their sensitive technologies in the name of national security. .
“What we did for more than twenty years with China, encouraging its development, was right, but perhaps we should have been more careful when it came to strategic goods, supply chains and (of) these elements”, recognized an official of the European Union.
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