Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy traveled to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia and Hiroshima, Japan to make the case for expanded support from non-Western countries at the Arab League summit and the Group of 7 summit over the weekend.
As Ukraine’s armed forces prepare for a counteroffensive in the ongoing effort to repel the Russian invasion, the US and European countries have, for the most part, been remarkably steadfast in their support for Ukraine via arms and economic sanctions against Russia. But countries like Saudi Arabia and India which have important trade and security relationships with the West aren’t jumping on board — partly because they have their own specific foreign policy and domestic development goals, and because they simply don’t see the war in Ukraine as their fight.
At Friday’s Arab league summit in Jeddah, Zelenskyy made his pitch to the leaders of 23 Middle Eastern and North African states, including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. These wealthy Gulf nations both buy US-made weapons and have strong trade relationships with Western countries as well as Russia, presenting a dilemma that faces many countries in the broader international order.
The weekend’s G7 summit saw Zelenskyy meeting privately with representatives of most parties in attendance, except Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who has previously hedged on denouncing Russia’s invasion, even partly blaming Ukraine and Western countries for prolonging the war. In addition to the G7 member states — the US, Canada, Japan, France, Germany, the UK, and Italy — leaders from the EU, Brazil, India, South Korea, Vietnam, Australia, Indonesia, Comoros, and Cook Islands attended this year’s meeting in Hiroshima.
Ukraine was the primary focus of this year’s summit, and the guest list offered Zelenskyy an opportunity to try and bring India and Brazil, two major players in the Global South, on his side. But Zelenskyy and his Western partners will…
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