Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has joined the recent discussion about Russia’s possible return to the Group of Seven by expressing gratitude to countries supporting Ukraine.
“Since March 2014, when Russia was suspended from the G8, nothing has changed. The Ukrainian Crimea is still occupied, the Ukrainian Donbas is still suffering from the war,” Zelensky wrote on Twitter on Aug. 21. “Grateful to those countries that have consistently supported Ukraine’s territorial integrity and sovereignty.”
Russia was excluded from the group in 2014 after the country annexed Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula and launched a war in eastern Ukraine. During five years, that war has killed more than 13,000 people.
The conversation about Russia’s possible return to G7 has started days before the group’s 45th summit in France, from Aug. 24-26. U.S. President Donald Trump again voiced the idea that Kremlin should be back to the group in 2020 on Aug. 21. However, the leaders of Germany, the United Kingdom and France stood firm on opposing Trump’s idea.
Apart from thanking the European leaders for support, Zelensky reminded about the steps Russia should take before it will be welcome in the group.
“Returning Ukraine’s occupied Crimea, cessation of hostilities in Donbas, releasing over 100 political prisoners and Ukrainian sailors that Kremlin currently holds would signal the world that Russia can be allowed back to its place at the top table of the global diplomacy,” Zelesnky wrote on Twitter.
Trump suggested Russia’s return to G7 while speaking to the media. He said that his predecessor, President Barack Obama, wanted Russia excluded from the group because “he got outsmarted.” However, the decision was made by the entire group.
According to Reuters, Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel said that Russia has been excluded from G7 because it annexed the Crimean peninsula and supported separatists in the Ukrainian Donbas, which hasn’t changed since then.
The chancellor said she would reconsider her position if Russia makes steps to live up to its commitments in the Minsk 2014 and 2015 peace agreements to halt the Kremlin’s war.
Boris Johnson, the UK prime minister, agreed with Merkel adding that Russian behavior is not only unacceptable in Ukraine, but in other parts of the world. The UK accuses Russia of using chemical weapons in the 2018 poisoning of Sergei Skripal, a former Russian military intelligence officer, and his daughter Yulia Skripal, who were living in England.
Johnson said that Russia cannot return to the G7 without changing.
According to a CNN source in White House, French President Emmanuel Macron agreed with Trump in a phone conversation on Aug. 20 that Russia should be invited to the G7 summit in 2020.
Although Macron neither confirmed nor denied the information, earlier on Aug. 19 he said that Russia isn’t welcome in G7 until the Ukrainian crisis is resolved. During Macron’s meeting with Putin in France, the French president said that Russia cannot get back into G7 until its war in Ukraine ends.
