US President Joe Biden is determined to uphold the global alliance punishing Russia for its invasion of Ukraine by embarking on a five-day trip to Europe at a time when the four-month war shows no signs of abating and its aftershocks on global oil supplies. food and energy deepen.

Joe Biden first joins a meeting of the Group of Seven major economic powers in Germany’s Bavarian Alps before traveling to Madrid for a summit with leaders from the 30 NATO countries. The visit comes at a time when the global coalition to support Ukraine and punish Russia for its aggression has shown signs of fraying amid rapidly soaring inflation in food and energy prices caused by the conflict.

Joe Biden, who arrived in Germany on Saturday, and G-7 leaders intend to announce a ban on gold imports from Russia, according to a person familiar with the White House planning and who was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly. Gold is Moscow’s second-largest export, after energy. The war in Ukraine has entered a phase of attrition since Joe Biden’s previous trip to Europe in March, just weeks after Russia launched its invasion. So the US president met with allies in Brussels as Ukraine was under regular attack and Biden tried to assure Eastern European partners in Poland that they would not be the next to face an armed incursion from Moscow.

The subsequent withdrawal of Russian troops from western Ukraine and the reorganization of its forces in the east of the country have changed the conflict to one centered on artillery battles and bloody house-to-house fighting in the country’s industrial hub, the Donbas region. While US officials see a broad consensus to keep up the pressure on Russia and support for Ukraine in the short term, they see Joe Biden’s trip as an opportunity to align strategies, both toward the conflict and its global ramifications heading into winter and beyond. there. The allies differ on whether the goals are merely to restore peace or to force Russia to pay a deeper price for the conflict to prevent a recurrence.

“Each country speaks for itself, each country has concerns about what they are willing to do or not do,” said John Kirby, spokesman for the White House National Security Council.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will address the attendees of both summits via video. The United States and its allies have sent the country billions of dollars in aid, in addition to imposing tougher sanctions on Russia for the invasion. Kirby has previously said the allies would make new “commitments” during the summits to further separate Russia from the global economy. The goal is to make it harder for Moscow to acquire technology to rebuild the arsenal it has depleted in Ukraine and to crack down on sanctions evasion by Russia and its oligarchs. G7 summits have traditionally put global financial issues front and center, but amid soaring inflation in the United States and Europe, little concrete action is expected.

“There are different drivers of inflation in these various economies, different things that can be used to address it,” said Josh Lipsky, director of the Atlantic Council’s Center for Geoeconomics. Lipsky envisions “a lack of ability to do anything coordinated about inflation, other than actually talking about the problem.” Joe Biden has attributed much of the price increase to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, especially in energy markets, as sanctions by the United States and its allies have limited Moscow’s ability to sell its oil and gas supplies.