President Joe Biden and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz speak during a bilateral meeting at the G7 Summit in Elmau, Germany, yesterday
President Joe Biden said yesterday that the United States and other Group of Seven leading economies will ban imports of gold from Russia, the latest in a series of sanctions that the club of democracies hopes will further isolate Russia economically over its invasion of Ukraine.
A formal announcement was expected Tuesday as the leaders hold their annual summit.
Biden and his counterparts will huddle on the summit’s opening day yesterday to discuss how to secure energy supplies and tackle inflation, aiming to keep the fallout from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine from splintering the global coalition working to punish Moscow.
Hours before the summit was to formally open, Russia launched missile strikes against the Ukrainian capital yesterday, striking at least two residential buildings, Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said. They were the first such strikes by 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 more difficult for Russia to participate in global markets. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss details before the announcement.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the ban on Russian gold will “directly hit Russian oligarchs and strike at the heart of Putin’s war machine,” a reference to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“Putin is squandering his dwindling resources on this pointless and barbaric war. He is bankrolling his ego at the expense of both the Ukrainian and Russian people,” Johnson said. “We need to starve the Putin regime of its funding.”
In recent years, gold has been the top Russian export after energy — reaching almost $19 billion or about 5% of global gold exports, in 2020, according to the White House.
Of Russian gold exports, 90% was consigned to G-7 countries. Of these Russian exports, over 90%, or nearly $17 billion, was exported to the UK. The United States imported less than $200 million in gold from Russia in 2019, and under $1 million in 2020 and 2021.
Biden arrived in Germany’s picturesque Bavarian alps early yesterday to join his counterparts for the annual meeting of the world’s leading democratic economies. Reverberations from the brutal war in Ukraine will be front and center of their discussions. Biden and the allies aim to present a united front in support of Ukraine as the conflict enters its fourth month.
Unity was the message Biden took into a pre-summit sit-down with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who holds the G-7’s rotating presidency and is hosting the gathering.
“We’ve got to make sure we have us all staying together. You know, we’re gonna continue working on economic challenges that we face but I think we get through all this,” Biden said.
Scholz replied that the “good message” is that “we all made it to stay united, which Putin never expected,” a reference to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“We have to stay together, because Putin has been counting on, from the beginning, that somehow NATO and the G7 would splinter, but we haven’t and we’re not going to,” Biden said. “We can’t let this aggression take the form it has and get away with it.” ZEKE MILLER, DARLENE SUPERVILLE & GEIR MOULSON, ELMAU, MDT/AP
