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"The G7 used to be the G8," said US President Donald Trump after a bilateral meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney at the G7 summit.
Standing next to a silent Carney, the US president blamed his predecessor, Barack Obama, and former Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for expelling Russia from the alliance over its invasion of the Crimean peninsula in 2014.
"Barack Obama and a person named Trudeau didn't want Russia in. And I would say that was a mistake because we wouldn't have a war now," he said of Moscow's ongoing occupation of Ukraine.
Trump went on to say that at the time, he didn't even consider Russia or its leader, Vladimir Putin, to be an enemy. "There was no concept, if I were president, this war would never have happened," he said.
Asked whether Putin should be invited back to the G7, Trump said, "I'm not going to say that at this point, because maybe too much water has gone over the dam. But it was a big mistake."
The American leader added that "Putin talks to me, he doesn't talk to anyone else because he was insulted when he was expelled from the G8."
Carney did not respond to Trump's comments on the war in Ukraine or Russia's expulsion from the G7. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky will attend the G7 meeting as a guest on Tuesday.
Contrary to Trump's claim, it was actually former Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper who helped oust Putin from the G8. A few months after Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, Harper confronted Putin in a private leaders' meeting before the G20 summit in Australia.
As Putin extended his hand to Harper, the former Canadian leader reportedly responded sharply: “I think I’ll shake your hand, but I have only one thing to tell you: You need to leave Ukraine.”
By the time Trudeau came to power in Ottawa in 2015, Russia was out of the alliance.
But Trump was right when he claimed that Trudeau was no fan of Putin: every major party leader in Canada has stood firmly on the side of Ukraine, including Carney, whose policies on Ukraine mirror those of Trudeau and Harper before him.
Trump also told his Canadian audience that it was "not a bad idea" for China to be part of the G7.
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