U.S. President Donald Trump said former prime minister Justin Trudeau led the effort to have Russia removed from the G8, even though the decision took place more than a year before Trudeau came to power.
Speaking alongside FIFA president Gianni Infantino at a World Cup event in Washington on Tuesday, Trump said Trudeau and former U.S. president Barack Obama “didn’t like” having Russia in the G8 and in a “foolish decision” tossed it out of the group.
“I thought it was a very bad decision,” he said. “It was headed by Trudeau, by the way, and Obama, they were the ones that really fought hard to get Russia out … and because of that maybe millions of people are dying.”
After meeting with Trump at the White House earlier that day, Prime Minister Mark Carney told reporters at the Canadian Embassy the U.S. president will be attending the G7 summit Canada is hosting from June 15 to 17.
“We agreed to have further conversations in the coming weeks and we are looking forward to meeting in person at the G7 Summit in Kananaskis, Alberta,” Carney said from the rooftop of the embassy.
Russia guaranteed Ukraine’s territorial integrity in the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, and in return, Ukraine agreed to give up the nuclear arsenal it inherited when the Soviet Union broke up.
Former prime minister Stephen Harper repeatedly criticized Russian President Vladimir Putin for violating that agreement by taking over Crimea in early 2014.
During a trip to Ukraine in March of that year, Harper said he wanted Russia expelled from the G8 over its annexation of Crimea weeks earlier.
‘It’s not good timing now,’ to re-admit Russia, says Trump
Days after that visit, Harper and the six other leaders in the group issued The Hague Declaration, announcing they would hold their own summit in Brussels in June 2014, instead of going to the G8 summit Russia was hosting in Sochi, effectively killing the G8.
“We will suspend our participation in the G8 until Russia changes course and the environment comes back to where the G8 is able to have a meaningful discussion,” the declaration said.
Earlier this year, Trump said he wanted to see Russia re-admitted to the G7 so the country could attend the Kananaskis summit.
“I’d love to have them back,” Trump said in February. “I think it was a mistake to throw them out. Look, it’s not a question of liking Russia or not liking Russia. It was the G8.”
Asked again Tuesday at the World Cup event if he still held that position, Trump said “It’s not good timing now … we missed that gate didn’t we.”
The president said there would have been a diplomatic advantage to having Putin around the G8 table where other leaders could have been “hammering him and saying let’s not do this.”
“If it was the G8, if Russia were in it, I think you probably wouldn’t have this ridiculous, deadly war going on right now,” Trump said.
