BRUSSELS — President Biden said that Russia should be removed from the G20 group of industrialised and developing nations because of the country’s invasion of Ukraine, but said that if the member nations do not agree to the measure, then Ukraine should be allowed to participate in the group’s meetings in the future.
“I raised the possibility” of ejecting Russia from the organisation, Mr. Biden said Thursday during a news conference in Brussels as he met with other world leaders.
Such a move would echo the 2014 decision of a smaller group of the world’s largest economies to eject Russia from the G8 to punish it for its invasion and occupation of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula.
Mr. Biden’s comments came after a day of rare and intense global diplomacy in which the president and the leaders of 30 other nations participated in three back-to-back summits aimed at expressing solidarity in confronting Russia. He met with NATO and the G7 leaders and European Union heads.
The NATO and G7 leaders announced new economic sanctions on Russia, additional aid for European countries dealing with the surge of refugees fleeing the violence in Ukraine, the deployment of more forces to NATO countries in Eastern Europe and grim preparations for the possibility that Russia might use chemical, biological or nuclear weapons.
Mr. Biden and the U.S. allies have moved with unexpected speed and authority over the past four weeks, rallying much of the world against President Vladimir Putin of Russia. But the historic gathering of leaders on Thursday underscored how the United States and its allies have in some ways reached their self-imposed limits.
The sense of stalemate on the battlefield is now also felt in the halls of diplomacy, where taking any dramatic new steps has proved to be difficult. Europeans have said they were not willing to bear the consequences of new sanctions on the Russian energy they depend on. And Mr. Biden has said he was not willing to commit troops to fight against Russia, fearful of provoking a bigger war.
Mr. Biden balked when he was asked whether the actions announced on Thursday would cause Mr. Putin to halt the war when the threat of sanctions did not deter him from invading in the first place.
“I did not say that in fact the sanctions would deter him,” Mr. Biden said. “Sanctions never deter.”
But on Feb. 11, Jake Sullivan, Mr. Biden’s national security adviser, said that “the president believes that sanctions are intended to deter.” Six days later, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said he was at the United Nations “not to start a war, but to prevent one.”
On Thursday, Mr. Biden said that maintaining unity in imposing sanctions for months will eventually convince Mr. Putin to abandon his aggression.
Mr. Biden also said that NATO “would respond” if Russia used chemical weapons in its assault on Ukraine. But he did not say whether the United States has intelligence suggesting that Mr. Putin was planning to use such weapons. And he declined to be specific about the kind of response NATO would employ.
