At their summit in Évian-les-Bains, France, G7 leaders backed additional support for Ukraine, called for more pressure on Russia, welcomed a deal with Iran, urged a ceasefire in Lebanon, and discussed China trade concerns and artificial intelligence policy. The gathering once again showed how a small club of states sets the terms for war, trade, and technology while ordinary people live with the consequences.
Who Gets the Weapons
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Wednesday that the summit delivered important results for Ukraine, including additional strengthening of Ukraine’s air defense, support for defense and energy resilience, and new sanctions on Russia. On X, he wrote, “The G7 Summit in France delivered important results for Ukraine. Most importantly, we agreed on additional strengthening of Ukraine’s air defense.” He added, “Our partners will ensure support for our defense and energy resilience,” and said they would also introduce new sanctions on Russia.
The leaders of Japan, the U.K., France, Germany, Italy, Canada and the U.S. said in a joint statement that they commended Ukraine for its resilience and progress on the battlefield in recent months and said there was now “a new momentum” in Kyiv’s resistance. The statement said the G7 agreed to increase the delivery of air defence capacities, additional systems and interceptors, and long-range capabilities, and said the group was ready to consider extending to Ukraine the benefit of licences to allow for an increase in Ukraine’s military production.
The same statement committed the G7 to increasing pressure on the Russian war economy by strengthening sanctions, including those on the oil and gas sectors, and to help Ukraine get through next winter. The AP said Ukraine’s full-scale invasion by Russia was now in its fifth year. The summit also came as Ukraine on Monday officially started its EU membership negotiations, with Zelenskyy expected at a European Union summit in Brussels on Thursday.
What They Call Security
French President Emmanuel Macron said the summit produced “unprecedented convergence” among G7 leaders, including U.S. President Donald Trump, on maintaining support for Ukraine. Mark Carney, the Canadian prime minister, hailed Trump’s signing of the G7 joint statement calling for further economic pressure on Russia as a gamechanger revealing a new realism by Trump on Ukraine, according to The Guardian.
The language of “support” and “security” here runs through military production, sanctions, and battlefield logistics. The G7 statement said the group was ready to consider extending to Ukraine the benefit of licences to allow for an increase in Ukraine’s military production. It also said the G7 would help Ukraine get through next winter, while increasing pressure on the Russian war economy.
NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte also played down the impact of the Trump administration’s decision to cut back the number of troops and military equipment it would provide allies should they come under attack. Rutte said the U.S. was not withdrawing more troops from Europe and said, “This is not about where forces and assets are currently located,” and, “It’s about who would do what if our defense plans were activated. So, let’s say in case of an Article 5 situation.” He said the U.S. was scaling back how it might help should an ally trigger Article 5, but that it did not intend to withdraw its nuclear weapons in Europe.
AP said NATO’s supreme allied commander, an American, was working on backup plans to defend Europe after the U.S. signaled on June 3 that it would no longer supply an aircraft carrier and support ships, aerial refueling planes and dozens of fighter jets, among other military assets, in a crisis. AP said the Pentagon had informed NATO allies earlier this month that it would no longer provide as much as it focused on potential threats elsewhere, notably from China in the Indo-Pacific region.
Deals, Markets, and the People Below
The Iran issue dominated part of the summit as Donald Trump responded to criticism of his ceasefire deal with Iran by warning that he was prepared to go back to dropping bombs and insisting the deal did not require the U.S. to pay even 10 cents to Iran. At a side meeting in Évian-les-Bains on Wednesday, he said that if Iran misbehaved he would “go back to dropping bombs right smack in the middle of their head.” He also said, “Anyone who wants to can invest. What do you expect me to say, no one is allowed to invest? But we’re not investing; we’re not putting up even 10 cents,” and added, “If they [others] want to, they can make this investment. What should I say, no one can ever invest in this country?”
Trump said, “I don’t think the Gulf countries will do this for a while, until they see Iran’s behaviour; this is a matter of behaviour.” He praised the deal and said, “There is nothing as smart as the market and the market loves it.” He also said, “The alternative would be a worldwide depression,” and argued that if he had not struck a deal, “the strait [of Hormuz] would never have been opened. They don’t like floating billion-dollar ships up and down the strait when their rockets are flying overhead and there are mines all over the place.” He said the price of oil per barrel had fallen to $72 and would soon fall below the level it had been at before the war.
The G7 statement welcomed the deal but said a follow-on agreement was necessary to rein in Iran’s ballistic missile programme, which was not directly addressed in the memorandum of understanding due to be signed on Friday by Iran and the U.S. The statement said future negotiations with Iran would benefit from the involvement of a wider group of regional and international actors including the IAEA, the UN nuclear weapons agency. It said the agreement, due to be signed on Friday in Switzerland, provided “an historic opportunity to prevent Iran from acquiring any nuclear weapon and tackling the threats related to its regional and ballistic activities. We support and are ready to contribute to its implementation.”
The memorandum agrees to immediately lift U.S. sanctions on Iran’s oil exports and a series of related industries, and to create a $300bn reconstruction fund. The leaders said they “strongly support a robust and comprehensive diplomatic follow-on agreement to the memorandum of understanding secured by President Trump that can bring peace and security for all in the region.” The statement also endorsed a multinational, independent and defensive initiative led by France and the UK that could help facilitate the resumption of maritime traffic in the Strait of Hormuz, and said the right of transit passage without restrictions or tolls was a bedrock of international trade.
Trade, Tech, and Managed Dependence
China was another major topic. AP reported that China’s trade practices were near the top of the agenda as leaders gathered in Évian-les-Bains, and that the G7 leaders said they were concerned that global imbalances had been persistent and widened in recent years. AP said China last year recorded a global trade surplus of $1.2 trillion, that Chinese exports to the 27-nation EU climbed 16.4% in January to May from a year earlier, and that France’s trade deficit with China rose to $5.3 billion from $3.3 billion a year earlier.
AP said French President Emmanuel Macron had warned earlier this year that Chinese exports were “literally killing a large part of the European industry” and that Europe was “slow to see that.” AP said the United States had seen Chinese goods exports to the U.S. drop 37% from January through April this year compared with the same period of 2025, and that Germany’s economy had stagnated, shrinking in 2023 and 2024 and growing just 0.2% last year. AP said economists David Autor of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, David Dorn of the University of Zurich and Gordon Hanson, now at Harvard, found that competition from China had led to the loss of 2.4 million American jobs.
AP also quoted Maurice Obstfeld, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, saying, “China’s export surge, unless its leaders rein it in, will provoke a protectionist wave against Chinese imports worldwide,” and Taylor Wang at HSBC warning this month that a China-EU trade dispute could threaten Chinese exports. AP quoted Eswar Prasad of Cornell University saying, “The second China shock is characterized by its companies running the board on manufacturing exports -- from low-tech, low-wage to high-tech high value-added industries,” and added that this was directly hitting advanced economies where it now hurt the most.
AP said the G7 leaders’ statement said, “Countries with large and persistent external surpluses should strengthen domestic sources of growth,” and that such policies could include lifting constraints on private demand growth, improving social safety nets and avoiding distortive policies with negative spillovers to other countries. AP said former U.S. trade negotiator Wendy Cutler, now senior vice president at the Asia Society Policy Institute, said, “Beijing has been relying on the rest of the world to address its overcapacity problem,” and added, “However, this unsustainable situation may soon change if the EU and others take steps to halt Chinese imports, following the U.S. lead.”
Artificial intelligence and technology sovereignty were also prominent. AP said AI executives gathered at the G7 as Europeans sought checks on American dominance. Reuters said Europe was fretting about U.S. AI tech as the world flocked to France for the G7 and VivaTech, and that the summit discussions included export controls, access to advanced AI models and Europe’s push for sovereign computing power. Reuters also said G7 leaders vowed closer ties on AI as they hashed out a trusted partners scheme. AP said the summit included discussion of Europe’s economic security and sovereign computing power.
The summit also called for a ceasefire in Lebanon. The G7 leaders met in Évian-les-Bains under the chair of French President Emmanuel Macron, with the U.S., France, Germany, Italy, the U.K., Canada and Japan all inside the room where decisions about war, trade, and technology were made for everyone else.