“The Ukrainian Issue” at the G7 Summits in Conditions of the Russian-Ukrainian Conflict 2014–2022

Abstract

This article is aimed to provide an in-depth analysis of the G7 policy towards Ukraine in the context of Russian invasion 2014–2022. The hypothesis formed and verified in this paper is that since the beginning of Russian expansion on Ukraine in 2014 the G7 members have called for a negotiated process and a political solution to the conflict, but it was hardly possible to quickly adopt and implement timely and adequately decisions to resolve the crisis in the region through the bonding of global and regional security mechanisms. Thus, a comfortable field for prolonging the conflict, which has developed into a full-scale war, was formed. The research methodology is based on systemic, historical, structural and political approaches to the study of the problem. Research methods are comparative analysis, content analysis, chronological and classification methods.

This study allows us to distinguish the stages of the G7 involvement in the “Ukrainian issue” in the period of 2014–2022. During these years, the group’s policy underwent three shifts in course, influenced in large part not only by the activities of Russia, but also by policy course changes of individual G7 members. The example of the nine-year unresolved local Russian-Ukrainian conflict shows that such crisis may pose a threat not only to regional, but also to global stability and there is a strong correlation between them.