Scholz, speaking to German television from the G7 summit he is hosting in the Bavarian Alps, said it was important not to "torpedo" the G20 summit. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy will address the G7 leaders on Monday on a video call.

As the besuited leaders sat down for their first meeting of the three-day G7 summit in the sweltering Bavarian Alps, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson asked if their jackets should come off - or if they should even disrobe further.

Russia's Feb. 24 invasion has killed thousands of people, displaced millions more and led to severe financial sanctions from the West, which Putin says are a reason to build stronger trade ties with other powers such as China, India and Iran.

The Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment, unveiled with fanfare by US President Joe Biden and G7 allies from Canada, Germany, Italy, Japan and the European Union, aims to fill a huge gap left as communist China uses its economic clout to stretch diplomatic tentacles into the furthest reaches of the world.

President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo has left for Europe on a peace-building mission, where he is expected to meet with his Ukrainian and Russian counterparts in an effort to broker peace talks between the warring countries, following a visit to Germany to attend the Group of Seven summit.

"Together, the G7 will announce that we will ban the import of Russian gold, a major export that rakes in tens of billions of dollars for Russia," President Joe Biden said on Twitter.

Up to four explosions rang out in central Kyiv in the early hours, in the first such attack on the city in weeks. Two more blasts were heard on the southern outskirts of the city later in the day, a Reuters reporter said.

"We have to stay together," Biden told Scholz at a meeting ahead of the G7 summit in the German Alps.

WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus convened a committee of experts on Thursday to advise him whether to sound the UN health agency's strongest alarm over the outbreak.

The summit takes place against a darker backdrop than last year when the British, Canadian, French, German, Italian, Japanese and US leaders met for the first time since before the COVID-19 pandemic and vowed to build back better.

"War has to be stopped and global food supply chains need to be reactivated," Jokowi said before leaving for Germany to attend the G7 summit on Monday.

The Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) was detected this month in a polar seagull found dead in the archipelago's capital Longyearbyen, the governor's office said in a statement Thursday.

"We face an unprecedented global hunger crisis," Guterres told the meeting in Berlin via video. "The war in Ukraine has compounded problems that have been brewing for years: climate disruption; the COVID-19 pandemic; the deeply unequal recovery."

Her successor Olaf Scholz, hobbled in domestic opinion polls and of modest global stature, may struggle to match that convivial atmosphere when leaders gather again from Sunday.

Kyiv's ambassador to Ankara said in early June that Turkish buyers were among those receiving grain that Russia had stolen from Ukraine, adding he had sought Turkey's help to identify and capture individuals responsible for the alleged shipments.

The one-day meeting, being held in private, was due to start at 1000 GMT, with a statement on the outcome likely to be issued on Friday.

For sure, Biden will tout the success of a monumental effort to rally the West and breathe new life into NATO -- a "high water mark in transatlantic solidarity in the post-Cold War period," according to a senior US official.

President Joe Biden leaves Saturday to meet with other G7 leaders in southern Germany before heading to Madrid for a summit where NATO is expected to announce plans to expand its forces in eastern Europe and Washington will lay out steps to strength European security.

President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo has "chosen not to stay silent" in the face of continued conflict, Foreign Minister Retno LP Marsudi has said, as he plans to push for peace between Ukraine and Russia.

Speaking on France 2 television, he said there was no doubt there was once again an upsurge of the pandemic in the country, adding he was personally in favour of reinstating mandatory face mask wearing on public transport.

Retno confirmed during a news conference the intention of Jokowi to visit Kyiv in addition to Moscow, which had been reported in Indonesian and Russian state media.

The bloc's executive arm last week proposed taking the symbolic first step to put Ukraine on the years-long path towards EU membership in a strong sign of support as Kyiv battles Russia's military onslaught. 

Macron was due to host far-right leader Marine Le Pen and other political party chiefs for rare talks at the Elysee as he seeks solutions to an unprecedented situation that risks plunging his second term into crisis two months after it began.

This year's meetings of the Group of 20 major economies have been overshadowed by the war in Ukraine, with Indonesia struggling to keep the group united as some Western countries threaten to boycott the summit and push for Russia's exclusion.

Picket lines appeared at dawn and will be lined by some of the more than 40,000 rail workers who are due to strike on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, bringing the network to a standstill. The London Underground was also shut due to the strike.

The war in Ukraine has overshadowed G20 meetings this year, with current chair Indonesia struggling to keep the group united and resisting pressure from Western members to exclude Russia.

While Macron's "Ensemble" grouping secured the largest number of lawmakers in the 577-seat National Assembly, it fell short of an absolute majority in a vote on Sunday that saw a leftwing alliance and the far-right perform strongly.

Britain last week approved the Australian's extradition to the United States, where he could face life in prison over publishing secret military files.

Making a rare trip outside Kyiv, where he is based for security reasons, Zelensky travelled to the hold-out Black Sea city of Mykolaiv and visited troops nearby and in the neighbouring Odessa region for the first time since the Russian invasion.

The weekend's soaring temperatures were the peak of a June heatwave in line with scientists' predictions that such phenomena will now strike earlier in the year thanks to global warming.