Europe1 .fr with AFP 14:31 p.m., May 19, 2023

While Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is expected in Hiroshima, Japan, at the G7 summit, member countries on Friday announced measures to "deprive Russia of G7 technologies, industrial equipment and services that support its war enterprise".

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is expected in person at the G7 summit in Hiroshima, Japan, whose leaders announced new sanctions on Friday to "deprive Russia" of resources that "support its war enterprise". "Very important things will be decided on the spot, and therefore the presence, the presence in person of our president is absolutely essential to defend our interests," said Secretary of the Security Council of Ukraine Oleksiy Danilov.

Meanwhile, Volodymyr Zelensky announced Friday on his Instagram account that he has arrived in Saudi Arabia, where he plans to speak at the Arab League summit held in Jeddah and conduct various bilateral talks, including with the crown prince of the oil and gas kingdom Mohammed bin Salman.

He will then travel this weekend to the Japanese city victim of the first atomic bombing in history in 1945 and has since become a global symbol of peace. His trip is "very important", commented a French diplomatic source.

An ambivalent symbol

While he was initially scheduled to speak by video conference, Volodymyr Zelensky, who has just completed a tour of Europe, is expected to attend the summit in person on Sunday, on the last day. That is, when the leaders of eight countries invited by the Japanese presidency will also be present, including major emerging countries such as Brazil, Indonesia and especially India - which has close military ties with Russia and has refused to condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

"We can assume that they will see each other", "it is an opportunity" to "express themselves with as many leaders as possible", said this diplomatic source, saying that the "best spokesman" for the cause of Ukraine, "is the Ukrainian president himself".

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His presence in Hiroshima will be an ambivalent symbol, believes Ian Lesser, vice-president of the German Marshall Fund of the United States, an American think tank: "This will highlight the importance of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict to defend "peace in the world, but also the risk of escalation" between nuclear powers.

Volodymyr Zelensky should ask the G7 for new military means to better oppose Russian troops, before the announced counter-offensive in Kiev: more artillery shells, more sophisticated air defense systems, and probably a new demand to obtain American-made F-16s, combat aircraft that the Europeans also have "in large quantities", recalled Ian Lesser.

Russian diamonds "not eternal"

In a joint statement issued after a meeting on Ukraine on Friday, the United States, Japan, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Italy and Canada announced measures to "deprive Russia of the technologies, industrial equipment and services of the G7 that support its war enterprise".

READ ALSO – G7: new sanctions "significant" of the United States against Russia

This includes restrictions on exports of goods "essential to Russia on the battlefield", as well as the targeting of entities accused of transporting equipment to the front on its behalf. The United Kingdom and the European Union had previously announced restrictions on their imports of Russian diamonds, an industry that brings billions of dollars to Moscow every year.

"Russian diamonds are not eternal," European Council President Charles Michel quipped. These sanctions show that "the G7 remains united in the face of the threat from Russia and firm in its support for Ukraine," said British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.

Tribute to the victims of Hiroshima

G7 leaders also gathered Friday at the Peace Memorial Park with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, whose family and political roots are in Hiroshima. They paid tribute to the approximately 140,000 victims of the American atomic bomb of August 6, 1945.

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However, Fumio Kishida's dream of taking advantage of the opportunity of this summit to launch together a strong message for nuclear disarmament is likely to remain a pious wish. 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".

The summit agenda will also be dominated by China and the willingness of G7 countries to diversify their supply chains to guard against the risk of "economic coercion" from Beijing. However, the France assured that it would not be "a G7 of confrontation" but "a G7 of cooperation and demand towards China".