US President Joe Biden on Sunday said that his Ukrainian counterpart Volydymyr Zelenskyy has given “flat assurance” that F-16 fighters will not attack Russian territory. Biden’s statement came after Washington approved Kyiv’s access to the jets, as per an AFP report.
"I have a flat assurance from Zelensky that they will not use it to go on and move onto Russian geographic territory, but wherever Russian troops are within Ukraine and the area, they would be able to do that," Biden told reporters at the G7 summit in Hiroshima.
World leaders shared the centre stage in Japan’s Hiroshima for the Group of Seven (G7) meeting including US President Biden, UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, French President Emannuel Macron, Australian President Anthony Albanese, Prime Minister Narendra Modi among others.
Speaking on increasing China’s aggression in the region, one of the top agendas of the meeting, Biden said that ties between Washington and Beijing should thaw “very shortly” after the US shot down a suspected Chinese spy balloon this year, as per another AFP report.
Biden noted that the relations between the two countries deteriorated in the months following his talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping at the G20 summit on the Indonesian island of Bali in November last year.
During a press conference following the G7 conference, the US President was asked why a planned hotline between the United States and China was not in operation.
"You're right, we should have an open hotline. At the Bali conference, that's what President Xi and I agreed we were going to do and meet on," he said.
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