G7 struggles to win over swing nations

HIROSHIMA: Heading into the G7 summit, the United States and its allies knew they needed to do more to win over global swing nations also courted by China and Russia. The weekend meeting in Japan showed they face a long road ahead.

The gathering in Hiroshima, the site of the first atomic bombing in 1945, showcased the horrors of nuclear weapons, following threats by Russian leader Vladimir Putin to use them in Ukraine. A surprise visit from its president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, gave him a chance to appeal to leaders from emerging economies who were also invited to the summit and have taken a neutral or ambivalent stance on the war.

Yet tangible progress was hard to see for the Group of Seven wealthy nations, even though some Western officials said the bloc was heading in the right direction.

Three key invited guests — Brazil’s Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, India’s Narendra Modi and Indonesia’s Joko Widodo, who collectively oversee a quarter of the world’s population — spoke of the need for peace in general terms without endorsing the G7 view on Ukraine.

In a news conference before leaving Hiroshima, Lula criticised President Joe Biden’s rhetoric towards Russia, saying it was not helping peace efforts.

The Brazilian leader insisted that he condemned Russia’s occupation of Ukraine, which he said had the right to defend its territory. But he did not rule out a solution to the war that included territorial losses by Ukraine, saying neither side had viable proposals to put an end to the conflict.

Lula said he was caught off guard by Zelenskyy’s appearance in Hiroshima, after some of his aides described the situation as a ‘‘trap’’. The two leaders did not meet over the weekend.

Indonesian President Joko Widodo, popularly known as Jokowi — who invited Zelenskyy to participate in the Group of 20 meeting last year — separately met with the Ukraine leader and offered to serve as a ‘‘bridge of peace’’.

Modi, who is hosting the G20 summit later this year, also met with Zelenskyy for the first time and conveyed ‘‘clear support for dialogue and diplomacy to find a way forward’’.

The interactions showed the difficulty facing G7 countries as they seek to defend Ukraine’s territorial integrity against Putin in the face of a vague 12point ceasefire proposal championed by Chinese President Xi Jinping, Russia’s top diplomatic ally.

China’s effort to stop the fighting has found support among socalled Global South nations hit by higher food and fuel costs, adding pressure on the G7 to convince the world Ukraine is worth defending.

A senior United Kingdom official saw the G7 effort as a success, saying it was not realistic to expect India or Brazil to suddenly start sanctioning Russia or sending weapons to Ukraine. Still, the official said, the summit amounted to a turning point for the G7 to make a concerted effort to counter Russian and Chinese efforts to exploit antiimperialist sentiment in middleground countries to build an alliance against the West.

The strategy going into the meeting was to avoid pressuring invited guests to condemn Putin and cut off economic support for Russia, and instead emphasise the need to uphold global rules like ‘‘don’t invade your neighbour’’ that have kept the world prosperous for decades, according to a person familiar with the situation. — Bloomberg News