A video has emerged showing that President William Ruto was invited to the G7 meeting in France largely for photo sessions and ceremonial appearances, rather than for any meaningful engagement with the world’s most powerful leaders.
Ruto is among eleven world leaders attending the summit in Évian-les-Bains, a picturesque resort town in southeastern France situated on the southern shore of Lake Geneva, near the Swiss border. The G7, made up of the United States, France, the United Kingdom, Germany, Japan, Italy and Canada, brought together its core members for the summit, including United States President Donald Trump, France’s Emmanuel Macron, Germany’s Friedrich Merz, Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, Japan’s Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, Canada’s Mark Carney, and UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
Alongside the main G7 leaders, several non-member heads of state were also invited, among them Kenya’s President William Ruto, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
The G7, however, remains a tightly restricted forum reserved for seven of the world’s largest advanced democracies. Leaders from non-member countries do not participate in the core, private policy negotiations that define the summit’s substantive agenda. This means that leaders such as Ruto and Brazil’s Lula da Silva were essentially invited for optics, appearing in group photographs and attending dinners hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron, without any real seat at the table where major global decisions are actually shaped.
The footage circulating online clearly captures this reality, showing that despite the grand optics surrounding his trip, Ruto did not take part in any of the crucial closed-door discussions held during the G7 meeting in France.
Here is the video showing that Ruto did not attend any of the substantive G7 meetings in France.
https://twitter.com/citynews254/status/2067223516089307495/video/1
