Why Russia is no longer a member of the G8

BANFF — When world leaders gathered for the 70th anniversary of the D-Day landings, it was an awkward situation: Just months before, Vladimir Putin’s Russia had invaded Ukraine, annexing Crimea. That invasion precipitated a diplomatic and military crisis that, more than 10 years later, is still unfolding. And in one of the earliest signs of the international community’s resistance to Russian belligerence, the leaders of the world’s advanced economies ejected Russia from the G8, in March of that year. “Personally, and I only speak for Canada here, I don’t see any way of a return of Mr. Putin to the (G8) table unless Russia fundamentally changes course,” said then prime minister Stephen Harper at the time. In fact, Putin had been slated to host world leaders in Sochi, Russia, in 2014, but the now seven-member summit regrouped and reorganized the event for Brussels, in Belgium. Since then, Russia has dramatically escalated its war on Ukraine, launching a full-scale invasion in February 2023. John Kirton, the director of the G7 research group, said that in 2014 the sidelining of Russia was a “very big deal.” “Russia, which had been a democratizing country — which is why it had become basically a full member of the G8 — was clearly turning back and in a very big, bold way, and even beyond that, that was a violation of the core membership criteria for being a G7 member, you have to be a democracy,” said Kirton. Yet, on Monday morning, U.S. President Donald Trump, who’s widely perceived as friendly with the Russian strongman, lamented the ejection of Russia from what was then the G8 in remarks before reporters after meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney. “The G7 used to be the G8. Barack Obama and a person named Trudeau didn’t want to have Russia in, and I would say that that was a mistake, because I think you wouldn’t have a war right now if you had Russia in, and you wouldn’t have a war right now if Trump were president four years ago,” Trump said. “It was a mistake in that you spend so much time talking about Russia, and he’s no longer at the table, so it makes life more complicated, but you wouldn’t have had the war.” The story of Russia leaving the G8 is more complicated than that, however. For starters, Justin Trudeau wasn’t prime minister in March 2014 — Harper was. And Harper was a bullish defender of Ukrainian sovereignty, becoming the first G7 leader to visit the embattled European nation following Russia’s invasion and famously telling Putin at a Group of 20 meeting in November 2014 that he should “get out of Ukraine.” It was also not just Obama and the Canadian prime minister that condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The Hague Declaration , signed by the leaders of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, the United States, the president of the European Council and the president of the European Commission, jointly condemned “Russia’s illegal attempt to annex Crimea in contravention of international law and specific international obligations,” and announced the member nations of the G8 would not participate in the Sochi summit, effectively bringing that organization to an end. Even as far back as 1997, when Russia officially joined the G8, not all members were enthusiastic about the country joining, Kirton said, being distrustful of Putin and his policy goals. On Monday, Trump said that Putin, who was then — as now — president of Russia, was incensed by the ejection. “He’s not a happy person about it. I can tell you that he basically doesn’t even speak to the people that threw him out, and I agree with him,” said Trump. But, back in 2014, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said being kicked out hardly mattered. “The G8 is an informal club, there is no formal membership in that club, so nobody can be expelled from that club by definition,” Lavrov said. “If our Western partners believe that this format has no more future, well so be it. We are not clinging to that format and we will not see it as a tragedy if it does not convene.” Harper, at the time, responded: “I am not surprised at the kind of cavalier reaction of Putin and then to strut and shrug off any reaction. That is how he handles these things.”

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