Europe 1 with AFP / Photo credit: POOL / GETTY IMAGES ASIAPAC / Getty Images via AFP 22:39 p.m., May 18, 2023

The United States has decided on new "significant" sanctions targeting the "Russian war machine," a senior U.S. official said shortly before the start of the G7 summit in Hiroshima, Japan, this Friday, local time, which is to be attended by President Joe Biden.

The US initiative comes at a time when the leaders of the major industrialized democracies must agree in Hiroshima, Japan, on a hardening of Russia and find a common line in the face of China's growing military and economic power. The U.S. measures are intended to "significantly restrict Russia's access to products necessary for its combat capabilities," according to a senior official in Joe Biden's administration.

They will prevent "about 70 entities in Russia and other countries from receiving U.S. exported goods, adding them to the Commerce Department's blacklist," the official added, referring to more than 300 new sanctions against "people, organizations, ships and aircraft" across Europe, the Middle East and Asia.

Other members of the G7 - which brings together the United States, Japan, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Italy and Canada - are also preparing to "put in place new sanctions and export barriers", he said.

The G7 will work to disrupt Russian military supplies, close loopholes in sanctions circumvention, further reduce its dependence on Russian energy, continue to restrict Moscow's access to the international financial system and commit to freezing Russian assets until the end of the war, the source said.

Suspense around Zelensky

A European Union official said on Thursday that the G7 talks would focus on Russia's diamond industry, which brings billions of dollars to Moscow every year. We believe that exports of Russian trade in this sector should be limited," the source said, adding that the accession of India, one of the main importers of diamonds, would also be crucial for the success of any new measure.

G7 leaders will be able to present their arguments directly to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, whose country has close military ties with Russia, and who has refused to condemn Moscow's invasion of Ukraine. India is one of eight third countries whose leaders were invited to the Hiroshima summit: a way for the G7 to try to rally some states reluctant to oppose Russia's war in Ukraine and Beijing's growing military ambitions.

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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is expected to speak via video conference over the weekend. The Japanese government ruled out that he would come in person, but speculation persisted. The G7 talks will officially begin on Friday afternoon Japan time after a visit by leaders to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park.

The heads of state and government will lay wreaths at the Hiroshima Cenotaph, which commemorates the estimated 140,000 people killed by the US atomic bomb of 6 August 1945.

Japanese Disarmament Dream

"I hope that here in Hiroshima, the G7 and the leaders of other countries will show their commitment to peace, which history will remember," Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, who has family and political roots in Hiroshima and would like to put nuclear disarmament on the agenda, said Thursday.

This moment of contemplation should however remain symbolic as the United States, the United Kingdom and the France possess thousands of nuclear warheads, and the other members of the G7, including Japan, are covered by the American "nuclear umbrella".

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Hopes for progress in disarmament are further dampened by heightened tensions with other nuclear powers such as Russia, North Korea and China. Joe Biden will become only the second sitting US president to visit Hiroshima, but like Barack Obama in 2016 he is not expected to apologize to Japan.

In addition to Ukraine, the agenda will also be dominated by China and the diversification of G7 countries' supply chains to guard against the risk of "economic coercion" from Beijing. "We want to organize global supply, trade and investment relations in such a way that risks are not increased by dependence on certain countries," Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Thursday, without naming China.