While Barack Obama has been strangely silent on this, Canada´s PM Stephen Harper hits the right note:
"I don't think Russia under Vladimir Putin belongs in the G7. Period," Harper told the Associated Press. "Canada would very, very strongly oppose Putin ever sitting around that table again. It would require consensus to bring Russia back and that consensus will just not happen."
The G7 suspended Russia from the grouping of leading industrialized nations following its annexation of Ukraine's Crimea last March, but has not ruled out a possible return under changed circumstances.
Harper, who is to visit Kyiv for talks with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk before heading to Bavaria for the G7 summit, said there was no room for conciliation with the Kremlin in light of the annexation of the Crimean Peninsula and its alleged support of pro-Russia separatists fighting government troops in eastern Ukraine.
"This is a country that has shown a willingness to invade its neighbors, to actually seize territory that does not belong to it, and so I don't think we should take this escalation of a hostile military posture lightly. It needs to be treated seriously," said Harper, whose country is home to more than one million people of Ukrainian heritage.
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