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AFP
Toronto
The foreign ministers of the Group of Seven industrialized nations met in Toronto on Sunday seeking a common front against what they see as aggression from Vladimir Putin's Russia.
The envoys were also keen to glean clues from their US colleague about whether President Donald Trump will tear up the Iran nuclear deal and how he will handle a planned summit with North Korea's Kim Jong Un. The ministers from the world's most powerful democracies are meeting to plan for June's G7 summit of rich-world leaders in Charlevoix, Quebec -- but Russia and North Korea will never be far from their minds.
Canada's Chrystia Freeland opened the meeting with a gathering to honor female foreign ministers and was later to host her G7 colleagues plus the European Union's representative at a working lunch to discuss the crisis in Russia and Ukraine.
Acting US Secretary of State John Sullivan's first bilateral meeting was with Ukraine's Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin, and he"reaffirmed the United States'ironclad support for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine in the face of Russian aggression."
G7 capitals are also worried about Russia's role in supporting Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad's regime in his country's brutal civil war and alleged attempt to kill a defector with a nerve agent on British soil.
On Monday, the foreign ministers issued a joint statement urging the Kremlin to address"all questions related to the incident"and to make a"full and complete disclosure of its previously undeclared Novichok programme."
Novichok is a group of deadly chemical compounds reportedly developed by the Soviet government in the 1970s and 80s and which Britain suspects was used to poison former Russian spy Sergei Skripal in Salisbury in March.
France's President Emmanuel Macron, who meets Trump on Monday at the White House, said in an interview that the West must stand up to Putin's attacks on western democracy, including the spreading of"fake news."
"He's strong and smart. But don't be na'efve. He's obsessed by interference in our democracies,"Macron told Fox News Sunday."That's why I do believe that we should never be weak with President Putin. When you are weak, he uses it."
