Japan is due to convene a G7 summit on February 24, the first anniversary of Russia's war against Ukraine, Japanese news agency Kyodo reported today, quoted by Lusa..

This year, the Asian country holds the rotating presidency of the group of the world's seven most developed economies, in which it has six NATO members as partners: the United States, Canada, Germany, France, Italy and the United Kingdom, plus the European Union (EU).

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg ends a visit to Japan today, after having been in South Korea, aimed at strengthening the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's ties with the two Asian partners.

Japanese government sources told Kyodo that Prime Minister Fumio Kishida intends to invite Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to take part in the extraordinary summit, which will be held via videoconference.

Japan will host the annual G7 summit at the end of May in Hiroshima, a city destroyed by US atomic bombs in 1945, at the end of the Second World War, along with Nagasaki.

Japan hopes that the summit in Hiroshima will send a message of unity against Russia's aggression against its neighbor, added Kyodo, according to Spanish news agency EFE.

The announcement of the possible special meeting on February 24 comes at a time of growing speculation that Russia will launch a large-scale attack on Ukraine in the spring, the Japanese news agency pointed out.

If it comes to pass, the special G7 summit would be the first organized by Kishida.

A similar meeting was held on February 24, 2022, at which the G7 leaders agreed to impose punitive economic sanctions on Russia, Kyodo recalled.

The country that chairs the G7 is responsible for organizing and hosting the annual meeting of the leaders of the countries that make up the group, from which Russia was excluded in 2014 for annexing the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea.

Since invading Ukraine on February 24 last year, Russia has annexed four more regions of the neighboring country: Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson and Zaporijia.

The Ukrainian authorities and the international community in general do not recognize Russian sovereignty in the annexed regions.

Russia chaired the then G8 in 2006, and Vladimir Putin, who is still the country's President, hosted that year's summit in St. Petersburg.

Before that, in 1997, the then Russian leader, Boris Yeltsin, hosted a special G7 meeting in Moscow on nuclear safety.

The group's first summit as the G8 took place in Denver, Colorado, in 1998, under the presidency of Bill Clinton.

The war in Ukraine also dominated the 48th G7 summit in 2022, held in Germany, the country that preceded Japan in the group's rotating presidency.