Karina Bovsunovskaya15:53, 20.02.25

US officials have spoken out against the phrase “Russian aggression” and similar descriptions of the war in Ukraine.

The United States opposes calling Russia an aggressor in a G7 statement marking the third anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, five Western officials told the Financial Times .

They say this threatens to disrupt the traditional show of unity. Officials say Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s participation in the online G7 summit has also not been agreed upon.

It is noted that such disagreements arose after US President Donald Trump accused Ukraine of war and called Zelensky “a dictator without elections,” and also proposed inviting Russia back to the G7.

Western officials say U.S. officials have pushed back against the phrase “Russian aggression” and similar descriptions that G7 leaders have used since 2022 to describe the war.

“We are very clear that we need to differentiate between Russia and Ukraine. They are not the same thing. The Americans are blocking this wording, but we are still working on it and hope for an agreement,” an official briefed on the matter told the Financial Times.

At the same time, the US Embassy in Kyiv did not comment on this information.

The Trump administration’s insistence on softening the language reflects a significant shift in U.S. policy toward describing the war as a “conflict in Ukraine,” officials said.

“Recent statements from the US State Department have used similar language, including a statement following Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Riyadh that twice referred to the ‘conflict in Ukraine.’ The change marks a departure from the language used by the Biden administration, which has frequently used phrases like ‘Russian aggression’ to refer to the biggest land war in Europe since World War II,” the Financial Times recalled.

(C)UNIAN 2025