“We have to stay together,” Joe Biden said to the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, the host for the latest G7 summit. Referring to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Biden added on Sunday that Vladimir Putin had been “counting on, from the beginning, [the idea] that somehow Nato would and the G7 would splinter. But we haven’t, and we’re not going to.”
Putting on a united front has been a constant refrain for world leaders when it comes to Russia’s actions in Ukraine. All nations have been hit by soaring energy costs and high food prices as inflation rises, problems made worse by events in Ukraine. There are worries about the threat of recession in a number of countries, including the US and the UK, meaning that leaders are facing mounting domestic pressures as well as having to maintain international diplomacy.
Some voters – and candidates – in recent primary elections in the US have expressed that they care more about the domestic cost of living crisis than the situation in Ukraine, and the bump Biden received in his approval ratings in relation to his global leadership over Russia’s invasion has slipped away – although he is not the only world leader in the G7 to have been subject to this effect.
