Trump again declares he wants Russia back at G7 summits
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U.S. President Donald Trump has stated that he wants Russia back at the Group of Seven summits of the world's leading economies, even though it still controls Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula.
"The fact is President Putin totally outsmarted President Obama on Crimea and other things. He made a living on outsmarting President Obama and frankly because of it, Obama was upset and he got [Putin] out of what was the G-8 into the G-7," Trump told reporters on Wednesday, according to the Voice of America.

A day earlier, Trump said that if another country at this week's summit moved to readmit Russia, "I would certainly be disposed to think about it very favorably."

We spend a lot of time talking about Russia at those meetings and they're not there. I think it would be a good thing if Russia were there, so we could speak directly, not have to speak by telephone," the U.S. president said.

"I think Russia should be apart of it (the G-7 Summit) because we’re looking for world peace, trade and other things. And it would be a lot easier to have Russia in where they had always been," Trump noted.

As a reminder, the Russian Federation was expelled from the old G8 format after it had annexed the Ukrainian Crimea in 2014 and all other members of the group – the United Kingdom, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the USA – imposed sanctions against Moscow.