President Donald Trump said Friday that Russia should be reinstated to a leading group of industrialized nations ahead of his visit to the G7 summit this weekend.
Trump’s statement is an extraordinary break from key US allies, and particularly striking given Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election. A special counsel investigation into whether Trump campaign officials colluded with Russia is underway, though Trump has repeatedly denied the allegations.
“Russia should be in this meeting,” Trump told reporters upon leaving the White House for the summit, which is being held in Charlevoix, Canada. “They should let Russia come back in, because we should have Russia at the negotiating table.”
Russia was suspended from the group — then known as the G8 — in 2014 after the majority of member countries allied against Russia’s annexation of Crimea, which Russia continues to hold.
Asked in an interview earlier this week about what would need to happen for Russia to return Crimea to Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin told Austria’s ORF broadcasting corporation that “there are no such conditions and there can never be.”