Nukes, Russia and gender to top G7 agenda
Foreign ministers began talks on peace, security in Toronto on Sunday
Russia is using Ukraine as a test ground for its information war against Western democracy, Ukraine’s foreign minister told G7 ministers meeting in Toronto on Sunday.
Foreign Affairs Minister Chystia Freeland wants the disruptive influence of Russia on the West to be a top agenda item and she set the table — literally — for Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin to deliver that message to her G7 counterparts.
Freeland invited Klimkin to be part of Sunday’s talks, hosting him and other ministers at her home for a traditional brunch that was prepared by her own children.
“It was amazing how she organized it, in the sense of creating this friendly atmosphere of hospitality with ministers sitting around the table with her kids … what they had personally prepared,” Klimkin told The Canadian Press in an interview Sunday.
Their conversation was decidedly less festive, with Klimkin pressing the G7 to take a strong, unified stand against what he described as Kremlin efforts to destabilize democracy through election interference and other cyber-meddling.
He said the petri dish for that strategy remains his country, which Russia invaded in 2014, annexing Crimea and occupying its eastern Donbass region.
He called this part of a bigger war “against the democratic transatlantic community.”
Supporting Ukraine, he said, should be seen “as a part of a bigger pattern.
Klimkin said he had a “great meeting” in Toronto on Saturday with U.S. Deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan.
“We have clear, consistent bipartisan support on (Capitol) Hill. We have such support from the administration.”
The G7 foreign ministers began meetings in Toronto on Sunday about the world’s many peace and security challenges, with the ongoing tensions with Russia and the North Korean nuclear crisis taking centre stage
This year’s gathering comes days after North Korea pledged to suspend testing of its nuclear and long-range missiles and close its nuclear test site, and days ahead of this week’s histor- ic summit between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and South Korean President Moon Jae-in.
Trump’s envoy to Canada, Ambassador Kelly Craft, says her boss is leading international efforts to persuade North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons arsenal.
“Concerning the upcoming meeting, President Trump is really carrying the water on the North Korea issue,” Craft said in a statement to The Canadian Press. “It’s something we’ve also been working closely with Canada on.”
Freeland co-hosted an international meeting on North Korea in January with Trump’s recently fired secretary of state, Rex Tillerson.
Freeland announced that she and the European Union’s high representative for foreign affairs, Federica Mogherini, will co-host a meeting of women foreign ministers in Canada this September.
Canada has made the advancement of gender equality a pervasive theme that cuts across all G7 discussions, and the foreign ministers’ meeting is no exception.