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Should Russia have returned to the G7?
Summary
A look back at the debate over readmitting Russia to the group, which surfaced at the 44th G7 summit in June 2018.
What did it mean when the US president asked for Russia to be brought back into the G7? On 14 June 2018, days after the 44th G7 summit, the question was still hanging over the group.
At the summit, on 8 June 2018, US President Donald Trump called for Russia to be reinstated. Russia had been suspended from the group after the annexation of Crimea in 2014. On 9 June 2018, Trump repeated the call.
A divided table
The proposal found one supporter among the other leaders. The Prime Minister of Italy, Giuseppe Conte, backed it. Most other G7 leaders rejected it.
The disagreement concerned the reason for the suspension. Russia had been removed over Crimea. In February and March 2014, Russia invaded the Crimean Peninsula of Ukraine, occupied it, and then annexed it after an illegitimate referendum. This came amid the uncertainty that followed Ukraine's Revolution of Dignity.
What the argument revealed
For Kyiv and for international readers, the episode showed that the consequences of 2014 were still contested among Ukraine's partners. Readmission would have reversed the group's response to the annexation, and most leaders were unwilling to do that.
Looking back from 2026, the argument of June 2018 shows how far the question of Russia's place among Western powers was from settled. The annexation itself has since been described as the start of the Russo-Ukrainian war, and some analysts see it as the start of a Second Cold War between Russia and the West.
