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LAST UPDATE | 18 May 2023
THE UNITED STATES is set to unveil “significant” new sanctions targeting Russia’s “war machine” as President Joe Biden meets fellow G7 leaders in Japan.
The heads of seven wealthy democracies are gathered in Hiroshima, where they will discuss tightening the screws on Russia’s ailing economy as well as how to respond to China’s growing military and economic power.
Washington today got the ball rolling, with a senior US administration official promising “a significant effort that will extensively restrict Russia’s access to goods that matter for its battlefield capabilities”.
“It will cut off roughly 70 entities from Russia and other countries from receiving US exports by adding them to the Commerce blacklist. And there will be upwards of 300 new sanctions against individuals, entities, vessels and aircraft,” the official said.
Other G7 members are also preparing to “implement new sanctions and export controls”, he added.
The bloc wants to disrupt Russian war supplies, close evasion loopholes and further reduce reliance on Russian energy, he said.
It will also continue to squeeze Moscow’s access to the international financial system and commit to keeping Russian assets frozen until the end of the war in Ukraine.
Yesterday, a European Union official said one potential target for discussion was Russia’s multi-billion-dollar diamond industry.
“We believe we need to limit exports from Russian trade in this sector,” the official said, adding that Indian buy-in would be crucial to making any new measures work.
India accounts for a large portion of the world’s trade in rough diamonds.
“We would like to engage in a dialogue with them, because the diamond industry is quite important in India,” the official said.
There will be a chance for G7 leaders to make their case directly to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, whose country has close military ties with Russia and has so far declined to condemn Moscow’s invasion.
Modi is among several leaders from major developing economies invited to the summit as the bloc tries to win over sceptical nations to its way of thinking on both Moscow’s war and China’s increasing sway.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is also expected to address the summit over the weekend by videolink, with Japan’s government squashing speculation that he could make a last-minute, in-person appearance.
Talks officially open on Friday afternoon, after Prime Minister Fumio Kishida takes leaders to Hiroshima’s peace park memorials and museum.
In a moment heavy with symbolism, they will lay wreaths at the Hiroshima cenotaph, which commemorates the estimated 140,000 people killed in the attack and its aftermath.
Kishida, who comes from Hiroshima, has tried to move nuclear disarmament up the agenda, reportedly insisting leaders visit not only peace memorials but also the museum, where they will see evidence of the suffering and devastation caused by the bomb.
“I hope that here in Hiroshima, the G7 and leaders from elsewhere will show their commitment to peace, which will be remembered in history,” he said Thursday.
However, there is little appetite to reduce stockpiles at a time when Moscow has made thinly veiled threats to use the weapons, and while North Korea is stoking fears of a new nuclear test with a barrage of missile launches.
Biden will become only the second American leader to visit the city Washington bombed at the close of World War Two though, like former president Barack Obama, he is not expected to make an apology for the attack.
Eighty-two-year-old Masao Ito survived the bombing as a small child. If given the chance, he said, he would warn leaders: “As long as there are nuclear weapons in the world, there is a possibility that your city could become like Hiroshima.”
“Is that really something you are willing to accept?”
Apart from Ukraine, China will dominate the three days of meetings.
There the focus will be on diversifying crucial supply chains away from China and insulating sectors from “economic coercion”.
But European countries insist that doesn’t mean breaking ties with China, one of the world’s largest markets.
“Not a single country” is pursuing “decoupling”, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz told reporters in Hiroshima.
“However, we want to organise global supply relations, trade and investment relations, in such a way that the risks are not increased by dependence on individual countries,” he said.
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Funny how there were no sanctions on the US and the UK when they murdered a Million People in Iraq and Afghanistan.. Right now the UK are selling weapons to Saudi Arabia to use in Yemen, the US supply weapons and Billions of dollars to Israel to murder innocent Civilians in Gaza but the Western World and nearly all the media I might add is only concerned about Russia
@Antbony Kearns: You’re correct in your first clause, the rest is off the charts conspiracy babble. Everyone thought Saddam overstepped the mark in Kuwait for the 1st war. The 2nd invasion by Bush Junior, now that was a crime, but they won’t pay with jail time of course because they were supported by their electorates. Nobody was sorry to see Saddam hang though bar a few Bathists and his family, who murdered plenty of Iraqis in their torture chambers. Ireland also has companies in the military sector so we can’t preach. We are all concerned about civilians in places like Yemen but selling to militaries is not a crime. Someone sells weapons to Hamas as well because they are not making those missiles themselves.
@Antbony Kearns: you know Russian tried and failed to bring the union we are in into submission using energy. It mistook the union and by extension Ireland as being weak. Fortunately there is only some of us who are weak.
@Antbony Kearns: there’s nothing funny about it. Sheer wreckless and not a second thought given, but when you get all you allies involed to back you and its them that run the whole ICC in the Hague then your gonna get off scott free
@Antbony Kearns: You are a little mixed up with your ‘facts’ there Vlad
The G7 are no longer the big boys they once were and this is just an attempt to project their steadily declining power on the new big players. China and India won’t turn on Russia because their BRICS alliances are very valuable to them, moreso than the G7 can be to them. The G7 nations don’t like not being able to use their economic might to force compliance of weaker nations, but they’ll just have to learn to get used to it it seems.
The irony of it at Hiroshima, the US promotes the war against Russia in a place where the US killed thousands of civilians.
How can the Japanese people stomach this hypocrisy.
@Roger Bond: considering the japanese conduct during ww2 they were very fortunate it was only 2 bombs dropped
@Roger Bond: should the US stand back? They would if trump was still president
@Roger Bond: The dropping of two atomic bombs on Japan was horrific. The consequences for the survivors in the targeted areas were appalling. Now, for some context. The Japanese military leaders were fully prepared to fight on after the second bomb was dropped. The Emperor over-ruled them. The Japanese high command were willing to allow vast numbers of Japanese civilians to perish, because of their conditioned ideology towards never surrendering, never losing honor and fighting to the last man/civilian. Projections of US deaths in taking the remaining islands and the mainland were approx 150,000. All nations warrant criticism and often condemnation in war (or as enablers of war), but actual facts, context and proportional guilt are obligatory. And Japanese forces had a consistent pattern of mass atrocities and barbarism (e.g. the ‘retaliation’ against Chinese people for their assistance to the American bombing mission to Japan after Pearl Harbour – truly horrifying mass murder).
@Numinous20111: All this to justify mass murder of civilians.
@Zmeevo Libe: no all that to get Japan to back down and surrender without the necessity of invading the home japanese islands causing even more civilian casualties and american casualties. if you had an alternative id love to hear it
@Zmeevo Libe: You missed my point. In war causes of events are complicated and a single atrocity cannot just be removed from its wider context. It is still an atrocity, but there is more involved than just painting one country as the guilty party and taking unjustifiable actions. And there is a lot of deliberate ignoring of any wider context.
@Numinous20111: I’ve heard these arguments before. Don’t buy it, or the bombing of Dresden for that matter. Would you approve if some other country said “we figured out that it would be difficult to defeat them and it would cost us 150 000 soldiers, so we decided to exterminate a couple of cities full of civilians”?
@Zmeevo Libe: You have bot presented the alternative that would have not resulted in as many lives lost yet…
The US establishment sanctions and profits at the same time from their proxy war and war economy…
Great bunch of lads…
I’ve been at both hiroshima and nagasaki….its heart breaking…but the truly heart breaking tale was one I learnt in hiroshima of the little girl with cancer from the fall out of the atomic bomb…she hoped if she made a thousand origami crane’s she would live…..she died before she could make then all….
Her class mates in honour helped her complete those thousand origami crane’s….
That was one of the heart breaking story’s of the atomic bombing of hiroshima and nagosaki…
Why delete my comment? Not insulting or false would love to here an excuse from someone at the journal for their incredible lack of journalistic integrity and openness to free an open debate!
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