MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia’s Foreign Ministry on Sunday dismissed the G7 summit in Japan’s Hiroshima as a “politicised” event that it said had pumped out anti-Russian and anti-Chinese statements and accused the forum of undermining global stability.
Moscow lashed out after the leaders of the world’s richest democracies said they would not back down from supporting Ukraine, in a warning to Russian President Vladimir Putin as he claimed to have taken the eastern city of Bakhmut, something Kyiv denied.
In a statement posted on Telegram, the Russian Foreign Ministry said that the G7 had “irreversibly deteriorated” and that the forum had become “an ‘incubator’ where, under the leadership of the Anglo-Saxons, destructive initiatives that undermine global stability are prepared”.
The statement accused the G7 of fanning anti-Russian and anti-Chinese “hysteria”.
Russia used to be a member of the G7 club of industrialised democracies, which was previously known as the G8, until Moscow was excluded after its the annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea region in 2014.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy was present at the Hiroshima summit as a guest, an opportunity he used to encourage member nations to maintain arms supplies and diplomatic support for Kyiv amid its war with Russia, something Moscow still calls “a special military operation.”
The summit gave Zelenskiy a chance to lobby for support from other attendees, like Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Brazil’s Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who have remained uncommitted.
The Russian Foreign Ministry, in the same statement, accused the G7 of “flirting” with non-Western states in an effort to stymie the development of their ties with Moscow and Beijing.
It said it was convinced though that the forum was incapable of reflecting the interests of the Asia-Pacific region, South Asia, the Middle East, Africa or Latin America.
(Reporting by Reuters; Editing by Andrew Osborn)
