The foreign ministers of the Group of Seven industrialized nations on Saturday reaffirmed their commitment to support Ukraine in its fight against Russia's invasion, the Japanese Foreign Ministry said, ahead of marking one year since Russia invaded its neighbor.
During a meeting in Munich, southern Germany, the top diplomats also called for other countries to stop backing Russia and pledged to beef up their economic sanctions against Moscow, the ministry said in a release.
Referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin's threats to use nuclear weapons in the war against the Eastern European state, the G-7 ministers said that doing so would have dire consequences, adding that Russia's "irresponsible" rhetoric is unacceptable, the ministry said.
The meeting, held on the sidelines of an international security conference in the southern German city of Munich, is the first in-person foreign ministerial talks to be chaired by Japan since the Asian nation assumed this year's rotating G-7 presidency.
Ministers from Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States, plus the European Union, condemned Russia's continuous attacks on Ukrainian civilians and essential infrastructure, agreeing to hold Moscow to account under international law, according to the ministry.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba also joined part of the meeting at his Japanese counterpart Yoshimasa Hayashi's invitation, the ministry said.
Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine on Feb. 24 last year, G-7 members, along with other like-minded nations, have imposed a raft of economic sanctions on Russia, such as freezing assets belonging to President Vladimir Putin and Russia's central bank, revocation of the country's "most-favored nation" trade status, and export bans of products with cutting-edge technologies.
The G-7 also discussed North Korea's missile and nuclear programs, as well as geopolitical issues posed by Beijing's increasingly assertive military activities in the Indo-Pacific region.
Hayashi told reporters after the gathering that the G-7 ministers strongly condemned Pyongyang's latest test launch of a ballistic missile, which likely fell into Japan's exclusive economic zone about 30 minutes before the meeting began.
At the outset of the talks, which were open to the media, Hayashi denounced the missile test as a "completely unacceptable" act.
In an apparent reference to Beijing, the ministers also confirmed their commitment to maintaining a "free and open Indo-Pacific" and their opposition toward unilateral attempts to alter the status quo by force or coercion, the Japanese ministry said.
U.S.-China tensions have grown after a Chinese spy balloon flew over the United States before being shot down by the military. Beijing has said the balloon was used for meteorological research and deviated far from its intended course.
China, in turn, argued that U.S. balloons have illegally flown over its airspace more than 10 times in the past year.
During his two-day stay in Germany from Friday, Hayashi held talks with Wang Yi, China's top foreign policy official, according to the ministry.
Hayashi will also likely separately meet his South Korean counterpart Park Jin, with the agenda set to include wartime labor, an issue that has strained the bilateral ties.
The Japanese minister will attend a session of the three-day Munich Security Conference through Sunday before returning to Japan.
The G-7 countries also plan to hold an online meeting of their leaders next Friday, on the first anniversary of the start of the Russian war in Ukraine, according to the sources.
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