Biden urges united front to counter Putin aggression
ELMAU, Germany — President Biden and Western allies opened a three-day summit in the Bavarian Alps on Sunday intent on keeping economic fallout from the war in Ukraine from fracturing the global coalition working to punish Russia’s aggression. Britain’s Boris Johnson warned the leaders not to give in to “fatigue” even as Russia launched air strikes against Kyiv.
The Group of Seven leaders are set to announce new bans on imports of Russian gold, the latest in a series of sanctions the club of democracies hopes will further isolate Russia economically. They also are looking at possible price caps on energy meant to limit Russian oil and gas profits that Moscow can pump into its war effort.
And following up on a proposal from last year’s G-7 summit, Biden formally opened a global infrastructure partnership designed to counter China’s influence in the developing world. The initiative aims to leverage $600 billion with fellow G-7 countries by 2027 for global infrastructure projects. Some $200 billion would come from the United States, Biden said.
U.S. officials have long argued that China’s infrastructure initiative traps receiving countries in debt and that the investments benefit China more than their hosts.
In a pre-summit show of force, Russia launched its first missile strikes against the Ukrainian capital in three weeks, striking at least two residential buildings, according to Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko.
“We have to stay together, because Putin has been counting on, from the beginning, that somehow NATO and the G-7 would splinter, but we haven’t and we’re not going to,” Biden said during a meeting with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who holds the G-7’s rotating presidency and is hosting the gathering.
Biden and his counterparts were using the gathering to discuss how to secure energy supplies and tackle inflation triggered by the war’s fallout.
Johnson, for his part, urged fellow leaders not to give in to “fatigue.” He has expressed concern that divisions may emerge in the pro-Ukraine alliance as the war grinds on.
Biden and the leaders of Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Japan, plus the EU, spent Sunday in both formal and informal settings discussing the war’s effects on the global economy, including inflation.
The ban on imports of gold from Russia is expected to be formally announced Tuesday as the leaders wind up their annual summit. Gold, in recent years, has been the top Russian export after energy — reaching almost $19 billion or about 5% of global gold exports in 2020, according to the White House.