G7 throws its weight behind Ukraine and takes aim at Russian oil
With the Iran war cooling, the leaders meeting in Evian put Ukraine back at the center and pointed the next round of pressure at Russia's energy exports.
For two weeks the war that consumed the G7 was the one in the Gulf. On Tuesday, at a summit in the French spa town of Evian-les-Bains, the leaders of the major industrial democracies turned back to the older one, declaring "unwavering support" for Ukraine and signaling that sanctions on Russian oil eased during the Iran crisis would soon return.
The shift matters because the United States, under President Donald Trump, has spent months pulling back from Ukraine while brokering a ceasefire between Israel, the US and Iran that is due to be signed in Geneva on Friday. With that conflict cooling, Trump told reporters in Evian that the pressure on Moscow could come back.
"Soon we'll be able to do that because the oil is now flowing. We're in a position to do that soon."
President Donald Trump, on reimposing Russian oil sanctions
Washington had temporarily eased some restrictions on Russian oil shipments in March, when crude prices climbed, and later extended the waiver. The logic was always tied to the price of oil, and with tankers expected to move more freely through the Strait of Hormuz once the Iran deal is signed, the White House now has room to tighten again. Britain went its own way, announcing fresh sanctions on the "shadow fleet" of tankers Russia uses to move oil and gas, including vessels recently bought to carry liquefied natural gas from its sanctioned Arctic LNG 2 project.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy joined the leaders for a session on the war that wrapped after 75 minutes. The entire 'Seven' supports Ukraine unanimously today,
the Ukrainian president said, adding that the group backed Kyiv's need for more Patriot interceptors and discussed licensing their production closer to the front. Those missiles are among the few systems able to knock down the Russian ballistic missiles that have hammered Ukraine's power grid and cities.
A war that keeps reaching the summit
The timing made its own argument. Hours before the summit opened, Russia launched hundreds of drones and dozens of missiles at Ukraine's largest cities, killing 11 people and setting fire to a centuries-old religious landmark in Kyiv, according to Ukrainian officials. The barrage came days after a Russian warship fired warning shots near a British-registered yacht in the English Channel, the kind of incident that keeps the war present even for Europeans far from the front.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen offered the upbeat reading. Ukraine, she said, was holding the front line and even partially regaining territory,
while Putin's war economy has never been as weak.
That is the European case in a sentence: keep arming Kyiv, keep squeezing Moscow, and let the arithmetic do the rest.
How much changes on the ground is harder to say. Talks between Moscow and Kyiv remain stalled, and the joint declarations commit the group to more air defense rather than to one decisive step. Trump, who once promised to end the war in 24 hours, conceded again that it has proved harder than he thought, calling the whole thing "ridiculous" even as he said he would "do whatever I can."
For now the leaders leave Evian with a familiar division of labor. Europe writes the checks and ships the missiles; Washington holds the lever marked oil. Whether it gets pulled may depend less on anything said in France than on the signing ceremony waiting in Geneva on Friday.
