ELMAU, Germany (AP) – President Joe Biden said on Sunday that the United States and other leading economies of the Group of Seven will ban imports of gold from Russia, the latest in a series of sanctions that the club of democracies he hopes they will further isolate Russia economically. his invasion of Ukraine.
A formal announcement was expected on Tuesday as leaders hold their annual summit.
Biden and his counterparts will meet on Sunday during the inaugural day of the summit to discuss how to secure energy supply and deal with inflation, with the aim of preventing the consequences of the Russian invasion of Ukraine from splitting. world coalition working to punish Moscow.
Hours before the formal opening of the summit, Russia on Sunday launched missile attacks on the Ukrainian capital, hitting at least two residential buildings, said Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko. They were the first such attacks on Russia in three weeks.
Senior Biden administration officials said gold is Moscow’s second-largest export after energy and that banning imports would make it difficult for Russia to participate in global markets. Officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the details before the announcement.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the ban on Russian gold “will directly impact Russian oligarchs and attack the heart of Putin’s war machine,” referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“Putin is wasting his dwindling resources in this futile, barbaric war. He is financing his ego at the expense of the Ukrainian and Russian people,” Johnson said. “We must starve the Putin regime of its funding.”
In recent years, gold has been Russia’s largest export after energy, reaching nearly $ 19 billion, or about 5 percent of world gold exports, by 2020, according to the White House.
Of Russian gold exports, 90% went to G-7 countries. Of these Russian exports, more than 90%, or nearly $ 17 billion, were exported to the United Kingdom. The United States imported less than $ 200 million in gold from Russia in 2019 and less than $ 1 million in 2020 and 2021.
Biden arrived early Sunday in Germany’s picturesque Bavarian Alps to join his counterparts at the annual meeting of the world’s major democratic economies. The reverberations of the brutal war in Ukraine will be the focus of their discussions. Biden and the Allies intend to present a single front in support of Ukraine when the conflict enters its fourth month.
The unit was the message Biden took in a pre-summit meeting with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who holds the rotating presidency of the G-7 and hosts the meeting.
“We have to make sure we stay together. You know, we will continue to work on the economic challenges we face, but I think we will overcome all of that,” Biden said.
Scholz responded that the “good message” is that “we all did it to stay together, something Putin never expected,” referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“We have to stay together, because Putin has counted, from the beginning, that in some way NATO and the G7 would split, but we haven’t and we won’t,” Biden said. “We can’t let this aggression take the shape it has and get away with it.”
Biden and leaders from Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Japan, as well as the European Union, were spending Sunday in formal and informal settings, including workshops to address the effects of war on the global economy. , including inflation and on infrastructure.
Among the issues to be addressed are energy price limits, which seek to limit the benefits of Russian oil and gas that Moscow can use in its war effort. The idea has been championed by U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen.
A senior German official, speaking on condition of anonymity in accordance with the department’s rules, said the US idea of price caps was being hotly debated, as to how it would work and how it would adapt to US, EU, British, Canadian and Japanese. sanctions regimes.
Officials were also prepared to discuss how to maintain commitments to address climate change while addressing critical energy supply needs as a result of the war.
“There is no dilution of climate commitments,” John Kirby, a spokesman for the Biden National Security Council, said on Saturday as the president flew to Germany.
Biden is also scheduled to formally launch a global infrastructure partnership on Sunday designed to counter China’s influence in the developing world. He had dubbed it “Rebuild a Better World” and presented the program at last year’s G-7 summit.
Kirby said Biden and other leaders would announce the first projects to benefit from what the U.S. sees as an “alternative to infrastructure models that sell debt traps to low- and middle-income partner countries, and advance competitiveness. US economy and our national security. ”
After the G-7 ends on Tuesday, Biden will travel to Madrid for a summit of the leaders of the 30 NATO members to align the strategy on the war in Ukraine.
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Superville reported from Telfs, Austria. Associated Press writers Jill Lawless in London contributed to this report.