As Joe Biden travels to Italy to meet with other G7 leaders, continued support for Ukraine is in the spotlight.
The summit will also discuss issues related to the spread of artificial intelligence, migration, the Russian military and China’s economic influence.
US President Joe Biden traveled to Italy on Wednesday ahead of the G7 summit, which began yesterday and is expected to focus on the possibility of converting seized Russian assets into billions of dollars to be given to Ukraine.
Biden and his counterparts from Canada, UK, France, Germany, Italy and Japan will be joined at the summit in southern Italy by Pope Francis, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Another issue to be highlighted is the success of the nationalist and anti-immigration right in the recent European elections, which, according to the broadcaster ABC News: “shook the global political establishment”.
– You hear this a lot when you talk to US and European officials: If we can’t get this done now, whether it’s on China, whether it’s on the assets, we may not have another chance, says Josh Lipsky, director of the GeoEconomics Center at the Atlantic Council, a globalist think tank.
– We don’t know what the world will look like three months, six months, nine months from now.
Continued support for Ukraine – regardless of who is in power
The Biden Administration believes it is of the utmost importance that military and economic support to Ukraine continue regardless of which parties govern the EU.
– We have every confidence that regardless of who fills the seats in the European Parliament, we’re going to continue to work closely with our EU partners on all the issues relative to our shared interests across the European continent. That includes supporting Ukraine, said White House national security spokesman John Kirby.
Biden and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy met just last week in Paris, but will meet again during today’s summit to discuss continued and increased support for Kiev. He will also meet privately with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, the pope and other world leaders.
$260 billion
The US president, like many European leaders, has said that aid to Ukraine has no limits, and his administration decided this week to send additional missile systems to the country.
It is also worth noting that Zelensky and some of his allies have called for the equivalent of $260 billion in seized Russian assets to be confiscated and given to Ukraine instead – something European officials have opposed, citing legal and financial stability issues.
Another option is to use only the interest from the Russian money to finance Ukraine – that would mean about $3 billion a year. The G7 countries have also discussed the possibility of giving Ukraine a larger loan and using the profits from the Russian assets to pay it off.
