Tuesday, May 6, 2014

Putin kicked out of G8 summit

Daniel Locke
Staff Writer

 Recently, the G8 summit, which was supposed to be held in June in Sochi, Russia has been suspended since members of what is now the G7 had kicked Russia out. After Russia annexed Crimea, the G7 had warned that Russia would be kicked out of the G8 summit, and decided to boycott the summit and impose sanctions upon Russia for these actions.
 Russia which has been a member of the G8 summit for 16 years since 1998 when they first joined, has finally ended its ties with the G8. Now the G7 composes of Japan, Italy, France, Britain, United States, Germany, and Canada. The G7 had also issued a joint statement that they would meet in Brussels, Belgium. The G7 responded to Russia’s violation in Ukraine since international law prohibits the use of force or coercion to acquire another state. They unanimously agreed to impose sanctions.
 Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov said that being kicked out of the G8 was no big deal. He also went on to make this statement: “G8 is an informal organization that does not give out any membership cards and, by its definition, cannot remove anyone," However the G7 summit has agreed to impose additional sanctions as the situation in Ukraine escalates. Yet Russia appears not to be concerned over these sanctions and still had kept roughly 20,000 troops on Ukraine’s border. Russia has also decided to impose sanctions of their own on the selected U.S. officials from entering Russia. Some officials that are unable to travel to Russia would include John Boehner, Harry Reid, John McCain, and Robert Menendez whom is the Chairman for the Senate foreign relations committee.

 However, China has proposed a solution to this conflict and advises all countries involved to do nothing to further the conflict. America has yet to see the mechanism China has proposed in action.