Kyiv: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has cut his scheduled G7 program short and is returning to Ukraine, Ukrainian broadcaster Hromadske reported, citing an unnamed source.
G7 has failed to adopt a joint “strong” statement on Ukraine during the summit in Canada over US reluctance, Reuters reported earlier.
Hromadske reported late on Tuesday night that Zelenskyy was cutting his scheduled G7 program short and was returning to Ukraine from Canada. The exact reason behind the decision remains unknown.
The UK government said in a statement on Tuesday that UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Zelenskyy met at the G7 summit and agreed to “drive forward the next stage of military support” and to convene the next “coalition of the willing” meeting in the coming weeks.
Zelenskyy said in an address at the G7 summit, as broadcast on his Telegram channel, that Ukraine needed $40 billion annually in support from Western countries, something that should be agreed by G7 leaders, including the US.
US President Donald Trump said on the sidelines of the G7 summit in Canada on Monday that there would not have been a conflict in Ukraine if Russia had not been expelled from the group.
French President Emmanuel Macron said after hosting a summit of the “coalition of the willing” in Paris on March 27 that a number of countries wanted to send troops to Ukraine as “deterrent forces.”
He said that the UK-French initiative would be neither a replacement for Ukrainian troops nor a peacekeeping force.
UNI SPUTNIK
