The US is opposing calling Russia the aggressor in a G7 statement on the third anniversary of Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, threatening to derail a traditional show of unity, according to five western officials familiar with the matter.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s participation at a virtual G7 summit on Monday has also not yet been agreed, the officials said.
The disagreement comes after US President Donald Trump blamed Ukraine for the war, described Zelenskyy as a “dictator without elections”, and suggested that Russia should be invited back into the G7.
The US envoys have objected to the phrase “Russian aggression” and similar descriptions that have been used by G7 leaders since 2022 to describe the conflict, the western officials said.
The world’s leading economies have traditionally issued a statement of support on February 24, the day on which the full-scale invasion started three years ago.
“We are adamant that there must be a distinction made between Russia and Ukraine. They are not the same,” an official briefed on the matter told the Financial Times.
“The Americans are blocking that language, but we are still working on it and hopeful of an agreement,” the official added.
In a further snub on Thursday, a planned news conference following talks between Zelenskyy and Trump’s special envoy for Ukraine was cancelled at the request of the American side, according to officials in Kyiv.
Zelenskyy was expected to speak to reporters alongside Keith Kellogg, but the event was called off by US officials after the meeting began, the Ukrainian presidential office said.
The US embassy in Kyiv declined to comment.
Russia’s aggression was mentioned five times in the G7 leaders’ statement last year. “We call on Russia to immediately cease its war of aggression and completely and unconditionally withdraw its military forces from the internationally recognised territory of Ukraine,” the 2024 statement said.
The Trump administration’s insistence on softening the language reflects a broader shift in US policy to describe the war as the “Ukraine conflict”, said two people familiar with the matter.
Recent statements from the US Department of State use similar wording, including a readout from secretary of state Marco Rubio’s meeting with Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov in Riyadh that twice mentions “the conflict in Ukraine”.
The change marks a departure from the language used by the Biden administration, which often used phrases such as “Russian aggression” in referring to the largest land war in Europe since the second world war.
The dispute over the statement comes after a week in which Trump has flattered Putin, agreed to many of his demands regarding Russia’s war in Ukraine, and showed a willingness to normalise Washington’s relations with Moscow, dispatching senior US officials to meet senior Russian officials on Tuesday in Riyadh.
Trump has also falsely claimed that Zelenskyy had an approval rating in Ukraine of just 4 per cent. A poll published this week showed that the president enjoyed 57 per cent support at home, up from 52 per cent in December, according to the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology.
Putin has reacted warmly to the Trump administration’s overtures. “The US negotiators were totally different — they were open to a negotiating process without any biases or judgments about what was done in the past,” Putin said after the Riyadh meeting. “They intend to work together.”
