Trump said at a Group of Seven summit in Canada on Monday that the G8 had been wrong to expel Russia in 2014 after it annexed Crimea, Reuters reported.
“This was a big mistake,” Trump said, adding he believed that the Russia-Ukraine war would not have begun in 2022 had President Vladimir Putin not been ejected from the leaders’ club. He said Putin “basically doesn’t even speak to the people that threw him out, and I agree with him”.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters, “We agree with President Trump: it was a big mistake then to exclude Russia from the G8 format.”
He said the G7 had “lost practical significance” for Russia, given the state of world affairs.
“Given the declining share of the G7 countries in the global economy, given all the trends that are observed in the G7 countries and, of course, against the background of, for example, such formats as the G20, the G7 looks dull and rather useless,” Peskov said.
