Emmanuel Macron has said the whole of the G7, including the US, recognises “the territorial integrity of Ukraine” as he hailed a “re-synchronisation” of positions on the issue.
The French president welcomed a “very deep change in the US approach”, saying Donald Trump and all the leaders present at the G7 summit at Évian-les-Bains understood that Vladimir Putin was not interested in peace.
“President Trump, like all of us, simply acknowledged that there was no serious willingness on Russia’s part today to discuss peace,” he said.
Macron repeatedly emphasised a “shared commitment to making progress on this issue”, which he described as “a very profound shift and remobilisation of the G7”.
The annual G7 meeting brings together the leaders of the world’s biggest economies: the US, France, Germany, Italy, the UK, Canada and Japan.
Macron’s remarks were in sharp contrast to last year’s G7, when the chasm between Trump’s courtship of Putin and European support for Kyiv was so marked that the US president walked out early and there was no attempt to agree on a final statement.
Trump also met the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, twice on the margins of the summit. Zelenskyy updated Trump on the Ukrainian military’s progress, which apparently impressed the US leader. The summit’s joint communique vowed to increase sanctions on Russia, including in the energy field.
Challenged on whether Trump could be trusted to follow through on a commitment to consider further sanctions against Russia, Macron said: “I have always trusted President Trump. When he has made commitments to us he has always done what he said he would do.”
Macron’s belief that Trump was re-engaging with the Ukraine issue was echoed by Canada’s prime minister, Mark Carney, who said he believed Trump had shifted to “a more realistic understanding of how this war will develop”. He described this as a gamechanger.
Diplomats at the summit said they had sensed that Trump’s relief at the apparently imminent end of the Iran war had brought him to the G7 summit in a far better mood than expected, and he showed a genuine willingness to engage on issues.
At his closing press conference, Macron said Zelenskyy had proposed that Putin come to the G7 summit to discuss the impasse, but “nothing had come back from Russia”.
The US and several European G7 countries also agreed to produce long-range missiles and air-defence systems under license in Ukraine. The move will not only fill a hole in European defences, but also give Ukraine’s increasingly efficient arms factories extra income.
The German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, said: “We are all currently producing too little, and this can be compensated for by granting licenses to companies that have these production capacities, including European and Ukrainian companies.”
Trump has said he would look into US missiles being produced under licence, but there are bound to be issues involving commercial secrecy and patents.