G7 Agrees: Russia doesn’t Want Negotiations

Despite their muted condemnation of Russian aggression against Ukraine and the ongoing murder of unarmed Ukrainian civilians, it seems as if the G7 members will still pursue a hardline against Moscow and hopefully will even intensify it.

French President Emmanuel Macron remarked on the sidelines of the recent G7 summit in Evian that negotiations with Russia on ending its war against Ukraine have run their course, according to The Guardian. It’s time for a new tactic.

“The United States took the initiative on negotiations, but what were the results, what was Russia’s response? None,” Macron said.

“Europeans also tried to communicate with Russia. And what happened? Nothing. Then President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he was ready to negotiate. What did President Vladimir Putin say? ‘No.’ President Trump, like all of us, agreed there was no serious desire on Russia’s part to hold peace talks or negotiations.”

Macron said the G7’s final conclusions on Ukraine reflect “quite far-reaching” support for Kyiv and show a “very deep change in approach,” including a clear US willingness to cooperate more closely with European partners. He said he was satisfied with the summit’s outcomes, which he called “real progress” marked by unity on Ukraine.

While the summit was long on words of multilateral support, it did not raise the stakes on Russia if it continues its bloody war. It didn’t, for example, say unequivocally that the G7, NATO and the free world want Russia’s destruction and defeat. Perhaps that will come later.

Russia’s plans for ending its war against Ukraine have been presented many times by many of its leaders from Putin on down the ladder. Indeed, one or another of them had added a range of clauses to negotiations or a ceasefire but none of them have been genuine, as the free world leaders have come around to understand.

Wipe away the Kremlin’s disinformation about its intentions and you will quickly see that Putin, Lavrov, and the others want one thing: Ukraine’s surrender, defeat, and reincorporation into its prison of nations. However, that would only contribute to Russia’s expansion into the former captive nations and Eastern Europe.

After striking the ancient Ukrainian legendary house of worship in Kyiv and killing eleven people, Russians, the next day, continued without remorse its bombardment of Ukrainian cities and towns. Its cutthroats have launched hundreds of long-range drones and dozens of missiles across multiple Ukrainian regions, targeting major cities including Kyiv, Kharkiv, Dnipro, Zaporizhzhia, and Poltava. Because Russia’s aerial campaigns routinely hit dozens of settlements across multiple front-line and central oblasts simultaneously, the exact number of distinct municipal targets is vast. Notable recent damages include:

Kyiv: Drones and missiles struck every district of the capital, severely damaging apartment buildings, setting historic cathedrals ablaze, and temporarily leaving up to 140,000 residents without power.

Dnipro & Kharkiv: Russian missile strikes on residential areas tore through apartment buildings, resulting in multiple civilian casualties and collapsing large portions of residential blocks.

Poltava & Zaporizhzhia: Strikes directly impacted energy facilities, gas production infrastructure, and critical power lines, cutting off gas supplies and forcing emergency blackouts in several localized districts.

In one instance, in the Kherson Oblast, two people were killed and 11 others injured in Russian attacks, Gov. Oleksandr Prokudin said. Russian forces targeted critical and residential areas, damaging four apartment buildings, four private homes, a gas pipeline, a farm, a passenger bus and vehicles.

In the meantime, Ukrainians have demonstrated that they can punch back with stunning pain. The overnight bombardment of Moscow told regular Russians that their leaders launched a war that Ukrainian soldiers have finally returned to their tsarist domain.

“Our long-range sanctions once again reached the Moscow region: for the second time in a week, the Moscow Oil Refinery was hit,” Zelenskyy wrote on Telegram on Thursday, June 18.

He added that Ukrainian forces also struck targets in Russia’s Rostov region and in Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine.

“This is a completely fair response to Russian strikes on our cities and communities, and another important result of our soldiers’ work against facilities that support the Russian war machine,” Zelenskyy said. The bombardment of bridges to temporarily occupied Crimea may soon cutoff the peninsula from the Ukrainian mainland.

Ukraine has repeatedly targeted Russian oil facilities, aiming to cut Moscow’s revenue for the war and make Russians feel the consequences of the invasion. Some areas have reported fuel shortages.

The attack by dozens of drones came hours after Zelenskyy said he had held “an important coordination call” with the presidents of the United States and France and had won key pledges of further support from this week’s G7 summit.

“If Ukraine is going to burn, your Moscow will burn too,” Zelenskyy said, adding that the attack was part of Kyiv’s effort to bring Putin to the negotiating table. “It is time to end the aggression, time to end this war.”

Diplomatic efforts have obviously failed to bring Putin to the negotiating table. Therefore, it is totally acceptable to scare the bejesus out of average Russian citizens so that they will force their leaders to end the war by packing up and leaving Ukraine with or without negotiations.