G7 Leaders Meet in France With Iran and Ukraine at the Center

Leaders of the Group of Seven (G7) gathered in France for a summit dominated by two crises, the war in Ukraine and instability in the Middle East. French President Emmanuel Macron said a working lunch would focus on reopening the Strait of Hormuz, the chokepoint at the center of the United States-Iran framework deal.

Africanews described the gathering as high-stakes talks on two major global crises, while The Hindu reported that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy joined the leaders and that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was expected to meet Trump on the sidelines. The presence of leaders from outside the bloc underscores how much of the agenda involves states that are not members.

Trump and Zelenskyy met on the sidelines, and afterward Trump said he would push for peace, telling reporters the meeting was "very good" and that Russia "should make a deal" given the scale of casualties on both sides. Zelenskyy said he had secured commitments from the G7, including more air-defense missiles and licenses to produce them, a winter support package and increased pressure on Russia, with the United States prepared to provide a backstop across those efforts.

Russia, notably, was absent and uninvited. The Kremlin confirmed that President Vladimir Putin had received no invitation, a reminder of how the forum has narrowed since Russia's exclusion a decade ago. That narrowing matters for the institution's reach. A body representing a shrinking share of global output is attempting to coordinate responses to conflicts whose resolution increasingly depends on countries it does not include.

For markets, the summit's most concrete output is a unified position on Gulf shipping and on financing and arming Ukraine. The new commitments to Kyiv's air defenses move toward the latter, though longer-term financing for Ukraine remains unresolved, and both issues carry direct consequences for energy and sovereign debt.