Leaders of the world’s most powerful democracies vowed Friday to tighten punishments on Russia for its 15-month invasion of Ukraine, days before President Volodymyr Zelensky joins the Group of Seven summit in person on Sunday.

“Our support for Ukraine will not waver,” the G7 leaders said in a statement released after closed-door meetings, vowing “to stand together against Russia’s illegal, unjustifiable, and unprovoked war of aggression against Ukraine.”

“Russia started this war and can end this war,” they said.

The leaders statement has now been published by the Japanese hosts here in Hiroshima.

The G7 demands that Russia "immediately, completely and unconditionally withdraws its troops and military equipment from the entire internationally recognised territory of Ukraine".

It adds that "a just peace cannot be realised without the complete and unconditional withdrawal of Russian troops and military equipment and this must be included in any call for peace".

The leaders say "our support for Ukraine will not waver" and the countries "stand together against Russia’s illegal, unjustifiable and unprovoked war of aggression against Ukraine".

Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, confirmed on national television that Zelensky would attend the summit.

“We were sure that our president would be where Ukraine needed him, in any part of the world, to solve the issue of stability of our country,” Danilov said Friday. “There will be very important matters decided there, so physical presence is a crucial thing to defend our interests.”

Zelensky announced Friday that he had opened a visit to Saudi Arabia, where Arab leaders were holding a summit.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s nuclear threats against Ukraine, along with North Korea ’s months-long barrage of missile tests and China’s rapidly expanding nuclear arsenal, have resonated with Japan’s push to make nuclear disarmament a major part of the G7 summit. World leaders Friday visited a peace park dedicated to the tens of thousands who died in the world’s first wartime atomic bomb detonation.

After group photos near the city’s iconic bombed-out dome, a wreath-laying and a symbolic cherry tree planting, a new round of sanctions were unveiled against Moscow, with a focus on redoubling efforts to enforce existing sanctions meant to stifle Russia’s war effort and hold accountable those behind it, a U.S. official said. Russia is now the most-sanctioned country in the world, but there are questions about the effectiveness of the financial penalties.

The U.S. component of the actions would blacklist about 70 Russian and third-country entities involved in Russia’s defense production, and sanction more than 300 individuals, entities, aircraft and vessels, said a U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to preview the announcement.

The official said the other G7 nations would undertake similar steps to further isolate Russia and to undermine its ability to wage war in Ukraine. Details were to emerge throughout the weekend summit.

The G7 nations said in Friday’s statement that they would work to keep Russia from using the international financial system to prosecute its war, would “further restrict Russia’s access to our economies” and would prevent sanctions evasion by Moscow.