A decade after Russia was expelled from the Group of Eight for invading and illegally annexing Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula, President Donald Trump says he wants to reverse the decision and permit Russia to rejoin the group of the world’s major industrialized democracies, while also slashing America’s defense budget by 50 percent.
“I'd love to have them back, I think it was a mistake to throw them out,” said Trump, who blamed then-president Barack Obama for the collective decision by the world’s largest industrialized economies to exclude Russia from what had become the Group of Seven, of G7, after the fall of the Soviet Union, when Russia was invited to join in an attempt to integrate it more tightly with the global economy.
