Zelenskyy Leaves Kananaskis Without the U.S. Meeting Kyiv Wanted Most
By Shahnoor Saqib | SCN NEWS
KANANASKIS, Alberta, June 17, 2025 (SCN NEWS) — Canada gave Ukraine a seat at the centre of its G7 summit on Tuesday, but the most consequential conversation Volodymyr Zelenskyy hoped to have never took place.
U.S. President Donald Trump had already left the mountain resort in Alberta before the summit's dedicated Ukraine session, denying Zelenskyy a planned face-to-face opportunity with the leader who controls the Western weapons, intelligence and sanctions leverage Kyiv can least afford to lose.
The contrast was difficult to miss. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney welcomed Zelenskyy to a summit programme that explicitly designated Tuesday morning's session “A strong and sovereign Ukraine.” European and other invited leaders gathered around the Ukrainian president, while Canada used its G7 presidency to keep pressure on Russia high on the agenda.
But the absence of the American president exposed a harder reality beneath the display of international solidarity: Canada can convene Ukraine's supporters, but it cannot substitute for Washington.
Zelenskyy had hoped to discuss additional weapons with Trump. Instead, he left Kananaskis without a meeting with the U.S. president or a new American arms commitment, telling G7 leaders that diplomacy was now “in a state of crisis” and urging them to keep pressing Trump to use U.S. influence to help end the war.
Trump's departure was officially attributed to the escalating Israel-Iran conflict, which required his return to Washington. Yet it came at an awkward moment for Ukraine. Only a day earlier, Trump had again questioned Russia's removal from what was once the G8, reopening a debate that many of Washington's closest allies consider settled after Moscow's seizure of Crimea in 2014.
The summit still produced a Canadian chair's statement saying G7 leaders backed efforts for a just and lasting peace, recognized Ukraine's willingness to accept an unconditional ceasefire and agreed Russia must do the same. Leaders also remained prepared to explore additional financial sanctions against Moscow. Unlike a conventional consensus declaration, however, a chair's statement did not require every G7 leader to sign it.
That distinction matters.
Canada entered its G7 presidency trying to preserve collective leverage over Russia at a time when the political assumptions that held the alliance together through much of the war were changing. Kananaskis demonstrated that Ottawa could still assemble European powers, Ukraine and influential non-G7 countries around the same table, but agreement on the direction of diplomacy was becoming harder to translate into a unified strategy.
The summit's guest list itself showed Carney looking beyond the traditional G7. Leaders from India, South Korea, Australia, South Africa, Brazil and Mexico were invited as Canada sought broader partnerships at a moment of uncertainty in its relationship with Washington.
For Ukraine, that wider coalition has value, but there are limits to what it can deliver.
Canada has become one of Kyiv's most consistent political supporters and has built separate diplomatic initiatives around humanitarian issues, including the return of Ukrainian children. European governments can provide weapons, financing and sanctions. Other states can serve as intermediaries with Moscow.
None individually possesses the combination of military supply, intelligence capability, economic power and diplomatic leverage held by the United States.
That imbalance was visible in Kananaskis.
Zelenskyy's meeting with Carney reinforced Canada's commitment, and the Ukrainian president joined a family photograph surrounded by leaders and invited partners against the Rocky Mountains. Yet the image of unity obscured the meeting that did not happen.
The episode also complicates Canada's earlier effort to connect humanitarian returns to the emerging ceasefire process. At the G7 foreign ministers' meeting in Charlevoix three months earlier, Canada and its partners had identified prisoner releases, civilian detainees and the return of Ukrainian children as potential confidence-building measures under a ceasefire.
Those ideas depend on there being a negotiating process with enough leverage behind it to obtain Russian cooperation.
The Istanbul talks earlier this month showed both the possibility and the limitation. Ukraine handed Russia an initial list of 339 children it wanted returned, converting a broad international demand into individual cases. Progress on those cases could provide a concrete humanitarian test of negotiations. But without wider political movement, even well-defined cases can remain unresolved.
Kananaskis therefore delivered two different messages.
The first was the one Canada intended: Ukraine still has a large international coalition behind it. The summit programme, meetings and statements made that visible.
The second was less comfortable.
When Zelenskyy needed the conversation with Washington that could change the military and diplomatic equation, Canada's G7 presidency could provide the room, the allies and the agenda — but not the American president.
For Ottawa, that may be the defining challenge of its Ukraine diplomacy in the months ahead: keeping a coalition together while the country with the greatest leverage increasingly sets its own timetable.
For Kyiv, the lesson from Kananaskis was even simpler.
A crowded family photograph is not the same thing as power.