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Moscow. — Russia said yesterday that it was open for co-operation with major Western powers, but ruled out a return to the Group of Eight, made up of the seven most industrialised nations, known as G7, and Russia.
“Such a format does not exist for now,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told a local radio station.
Leaders of G7 declared in March that they would boycott the G8 summit due in Russia’s Sochi in June.
Instead, they will gather in Brussels for a two-day G7 summit.
The expulsion of Russia from the G8 came three days after Moscow took Crimea after a referendum in the peninsula. But the Kremlin did not rule out co-operation with the major Western powers.
Russia would continue to participate in the Group of 20, which includes the most developed and major developing countries of the world, Peskov said.
He said Russian President Vladimir Putin will not have a bilateral meeting with US President Barack Obama even though both leaders are attending the 70th anniversary of D-Day Landings in France’s Normandy on Friday.
“We are not making such preparations . . . Participants of war memorial events will stay together, in one group,” Itar-Tass news agency quoted him as saying.
But the spokesman did not rule out possible brief talks between them, as well as between Putin and Ukrainian president-elect Petro Poroshenko.
The Kremlin earlier confirmed that Putin, on his first visit to a Western country since the start of the Ukraine crisis, would have separate meetings with British prime minister David Cameron and German chancellor Angela Merkel in Normandy.
Major Western powers have imposed several rounds of sanctions against Russia in response to Moscow’s moves in the months-long unrest in Ukraine. — Xinhua.
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