KYIV (Reuters) -Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Thursday he planned to attend the Group of Seven summit in Canada next week and hoped to meet U.S. President Donald Trump on the sidelines of the meeting.
Zelenskiy told a news briefing he planned to discuss continued support for Ukraine, sanctions against Russia, and future financing for Kyiv’s reconstruction efforts during the upcoming summit.
“Anyway, the final decision is in the White House, it depends on the President of the United States of America,” Zelenskiy said regarding the possible imposition of tough sanctions against Russia.
“I hope that we will have a conversation (with Trump) at the G7 summit and I hope that if no decisions are made before then, I will be able to have at least an understanding of how close we are to that decision,” he added.
Trump last week said that he hadn’t decided whether to deploy sanctions against Russia that are being considered by the U.S. Senate.
Zelenskiy said at a joint press conference with the German defence minister Boris Pistorius that Kyiv was unlikely to be able to compensate for U.S. weapons systems if such deliveries stopped.
He also said that Ukraine intends to expand cooperation with Germany in joint weapon production.
“We need financing… Germany is one of those countries where they understand it and they know the rules and they always do what they say,” Zelenskiy said.
Pistorius said on Thursday that his country’s military support for Ukraine had reached 7 billion euros ($8.12 billion) this year and a further 1.9 billion euros are pending parliamentary approval.
(Reporting by Pavel Polityuk, writing by Olena Harmash; Editing by Elaine Hardcastle, Alexandra Hudson)
