The Group of Seven summit opened on the shores of Lake Geneva under the long shadow of a freshly minted US-Iranian preliminary peace deal, yet within hours the attention of the world’s most industrialised democracies pivoted sharply to the grinding war in Ukraine. Donald Trump arrived in Évian-les-Bains on Monday evening buoyed by the framework agreement with Tehran, declaring it would bring “great success”. By Tuesday morning, however, the American president was seated alongside Volodymyr Zelensky and Emmanuel Macron in a hastily arranged trilateral meeting, telling reporters that Russia “should make a deal” and that he would do “everything in my power” to end a conflict that has now outlasted the First World War.

European leaders, while publicly welcoming the Iran accord, used the summit’s opening dinner and subsequent sessions to press Trump on its glaring ambiguities. Viewed from Paris, Berlin and London, the chief anxiety is that a temporary, shallow agreement risks entrenching rather than containing Tehran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programmes. Officials pointed to the absence of a published text and conflicting American signals on how quickly the Strait of Hormuz could be reopened to commercial shipping. France’s Macron insisted any final deal must be “solid, serious and definitive”, a sentiment echoed in a joint statement from the so-called E4 format — Germany, France, Britain and Italy — that urged rapid implementation while quietly demanding clarity on the sequencing of sanctions relief and verified uranium curbs.

On Ukraine, the G7 found a more unified voice. A French diplomatic source confirmed that leaders had agreed to “increase pressure on Russia through sanctions on gas and oil”, targeting the hydrocarbon revenues that fuel Moscow’s war machine. The decision, taken with Zelensky in the room, was coupled with a shared assessment that the battlefield dynamic now favours Kyiv. Trump’s bilateral with Zelensky, their first face-to-face meeting in nearly four months, was described as “very good”, and the Ukrainian leader later signalled that the presence of both Trump and Macron offered a “very good opportunity” for a collective push toward peace. Yet Moscow, through Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, stated it had received no official invitation to the summit, underscoring the diplomatic distance still to be bridged.

Behind the choreographed unity, the summit exposed the delicate balancing act required to hold the Western alliance together. Trump’s recent outreach to Vladimir Putin — including a Sunday phone call and a reported invitation to the G7 that went unanswered — has stirred unease in European capitals that still recall his Anchorage meeting with the Russian leader less than a year ago. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, after months of frosty relations with Washington, used a private exchange with Trump to insist on the “necessary unity of the West”, a message that appeared to resonate. Meanwhile, the formal launch of Ukraine’s EU accession talks in Luxembourg on the same day lent symbolic weight to Kyiv’s argument that its future lies irreversibly within European structures.

As the summit moves into its final day, the twin dossiers of Iran and Ukraine will continue to test the coherence of the G7. The Iran framework opens a 60-day window for detailed negotiations on highly enriched uranium and sanctions relief, a period during which European scepticism will either be vindicated or assuaged. On Ukraine, the newly agreed energy sanctions signal resolve, but the path to a negotiated settlement remains blocked by Moscow’s refusal to engage on terms acceptable to Kyiv and its allies. The Évian gathering has clarified the stakes: a West that is willing to tighten the economic vice on Russia while demanding that any pact with Iran be built to last, not merely to claim a quick victory.