Ukraine-Russia battle newest: Donald Trump says it was a ‘mistake to kick Russia out of G7’

US president Donald Trump made a brief one-day visit to the G7 summit in Canada on Monday and largely made headlines for expressing unhappiness over the 2014 expulsion of Vladimir Putin from the group.

“This was a big mistake,” Mr Trump said, adding he believed Russia would not have invaded Ukraine in 2022 had Putin not been ejected from the high-profile group of nations.

“I think you wouldn’t have a war right now if you had Russia in, and you wouldn’t have a war right now if Trump were president four years ago,” he said.

“They threw Russia out, which I claimed was a very big mistake, even though I wasn’t in politics then.

“Putin speaks to me. He doesn’t speak to anybody else … he’s not a happy person about it. I can tell you that he basically doesn’t even speak to the people that threw him out, and I agree with him,” Mr Trump said.

Mr Trump stopped short of saying Russia should be reinstated in the group.

His remarks come at a time when European nations say they want to persuade the US president to back tougher sanctions against Moscow.

The US leader has indicated that he would rather have the G7 become the G8 or possibly even the G9, adding Russia and China as authoritarian governments to an organisation whose members are otherwise democracies.

“It was a rough start,” said Josh Lipsky, a former senior IMF official who now chairs the international economics department at the Atlantic Council.

At least 16 people were injured after waves of Russian drones and missiles struck districts across the Ukrainian capital Kyiv early this morning, city officials said.

The barrage of drones and missiles used to attack Ukrainian cities damaged an apartment building and sparked fires.

Witnesses told Reuters the drones swarmed over the capital and they also heard what appeared to be missiles overhead.

An air raid alert remained in effect more than seven hours after it had been proclaimed.

Other parts of the country also came under attack, including areas outside the capital and the southeastern city of Zaporizhzhia, where the regional governor reported at least four strikes.

Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko said on Telegram that most of the 16 injured were in Solomianskyi district, near the city centre, where a drone damaged the top floor of an apartment building and other non-residential areas.

Tymur Tkachenko, head of Kyiv’s military administration, noted 12 strikes in five districts. Among the targets was a kindergarten in the city’s eastern edge.

“The capital is coming under a combined attack,” Tkachenko wrote.

“The Russians are deploying missiles and strike drones. There are fires in different districts and emergency crews are at work.

“Waves of drones had attacked Solomianskyi district, he said. “This is a very difficult night,” he wrote, adding that there had been power cuts in some areas.

Volodymyr Zelensky’s plans to discuss new weapons purchases for Ukraine with Donald Trump in Canada have been scrapped after the US president said he is leaving the Group of Seven summit a day early.

Mr Trump’s early exit is due to the evolving situation of conflict in the Middle East, the White House said.

Mr Zelensky, who is visiting Austria, is set to attend the Group of Seven summit in Canada today, where he had hoped to meet Mr Trump on the sidelines of the meeting.

“One of the questions that I will discuss with president Trump during the meeting is the defence package that Ukraine is ready to buy,” Mr Zelensky had told a news conference in Vienna.

French president Emmanuel Macron said Mr Trump’s departure was positive, given the objective to get a ceasefire in the Middle East.

G7 leaders from Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the US, along with the European Union, are convening in the resort area of Kananaskis in the Canadian Rockies until this evening.

A US citizen was killed in an overnight air attack on Ukraine’s capital Kyiv, the city’s mayor said this morning.

The 62-year-old American was pronounced dead by doctors in the city, mayor Vitali Klitchsko said on his Telegram channel and gave no other details.

“During the attack on Kyiv, a 62-year-old US citizen died in a dwelling in the Solomianskyi district opposite where medics were providing assistance,” Mr Klitschko wrote. “Medics noted his clinical, biological death.”

The US embassy in Kyiv has not issued a comment immediately.

Officials said Russian forces deployed drones and missiles in the attack on several districts of the capital, with at least 12 people injured.

Prime minister Keir Starmer has said he is “happy with the make-up” of the G7, Downing Street said after the US president Donald Trump suggested that kicking Russia out of the group was a mistake.

Asked earlier yesterday if Sir Keir agreed with the US president’s remarks, a Number 10 spokesman said: “I think obviously those comments are a matter for the US.”

He added: “The prime minister goes ahead with the G7 and is happy with the make-up of it.”

Russian air defence units repelled two Ukrainian drones headed for Moscow, the city’s mayor said in the early hours today.

Emergency crews were examining fragments at sites where the drones fell, mayor Sergei Sobyanin said.

Ukraine and Russia have both sent waves of drones against a range of targets in recent weeks and have exchanged attacks as of this morning.

Last month, dozens of Ukrainian drones targeted Moscow or the region surrounding the capital.

Donald Trump said it was a mistake to kick out Russian president Vladimir Putin from the G7 summit yesterday as he started his speech.

The US president used the brief media appearance alongside Canadian prime minister Mark Carney to revive his years-old complaint about Mr Putin’s removal in the wake of the 2014 invasion of Crimea.

Mr Trump complained that the G7 “used to be the G8” until “Barack Obama and a person named Trudeau didn’t want to have Russia in.”

“I would say that that was a mistake, because I think you wouldn’t have a war right now if you had Russia in, and you wouldn’t have a war right now if Trump were president four years ago. But it didn’t work out that way. But it used to be the G8 and now it’s, I guess, what’s that? Nine years ago, eight years ago, it switched over,” Mr Trump said.

Andrew Feinberg reports:

At least five people were injured after a mass drone attack caused major damage to a Kyiv apartment building in the early hours today, city officials said.

Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko said the damaged apartment building was in the Solomianskyi district near the centre of the capital. Rescue teams were also needed in two other districts, he said.

“A large group of enemy drones is still headed for the city centre,” he said, warning of incoming Russian attack.

While Mr Klitschko said two people had been injured, Tymur Tkachenko, head of the city’s military administration, put the number of injured at five.