UPDATE June 9: Trump JUST repeated the call to allow Russia back into the economic world power group called the G-7.
Trump called on the world’s leading economies on Friday to reinstate Russia to the Group of 7 nations four years after it was cast out for annexing Crimea. The president made the suggestion to reporters as he headed to Canada for the annual meeting of the G-7, a gathering that already was promising to be tension-filled over trade, Iran and Trump’s approach to foreign leaders.
Russia joined the group in the 1990s after emerging from the wreckage of the Soviet Union, making it the G-8, but its armed intervention in its neighbor Ukraine in 2014 and its seizure of the Crimean peninsula isolated it from other major powers. The remaining members, Barack Obama, expelled it in a sign of global resolve not to let established international borders be rewritten by force. Mr. Trump spent Friday talking mess with Canada and France and decided to skip the end of the annual meeting in Quebec, so he would be ‘on time’ to Singapore, to meet North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, who is apparently the only other head of state he cares for besides Putin.
The idea of readmitting Russia to the world’s most exclusive club without any concession by the Kremlin shows hows unusually friendly Trump has been to Russia since becoming president.
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