Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has called for the exclusion of Russia from the G-20 meet scheduled for November this year.
Trudeau told reporters in Ottawa that it “can’t be business as usual to have Vladimir Putin sitting around the table pretending that everything is OK. Because it’s not OK and it’s his fault.”
While Canada has imposed sanctions upon the Russian leadership, including its President Vladimir Putin, following the attack on Ukraine, the West may find it more difficult to remove him from the 17th heads of State and Government summit in Bali under Indonesia’s presidency, which is scheduled for November 15 and 16.
Canada sanctioned Putin on February 25, as the Russian attack escalated.
However, Trudeau asserted that his presence could be problematic, as he said, “When it comes to Vladimir Putin sitting around that table with the rest of us, that’s going to be extraordinarily difficult for us and unproductive for the G20.”
Those remarks came on a day when Trudeau also met with parliamentarians from Ukraine in the Canadian capital. He tweeted later, “They shared stories about the war back home, and spoke about the support they need from Canada and the world. Their resiliency, and the strength of the Ukrainian people, is inspiring – and we’ll continue to be there for them.”
Trudeau discussed the G-20 bloc economic objective particularly as the world emerges from a crisis caused by the Covid-19 pandemic and said that Russia with its “illegal invasion of Ukraine, upended economic growth for everyone around the world and can’t possibly be a constructive partner.”
Canada had played a part when it was decided eight years earlier to suspend Russia from membership of what was then the G-8. However, the seven remaining members, France, Germany, the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, Italy, and Canada, along with the European Union, have already joined together to sanction Russia but that may not be tenable when it comes to the G-20, as members, including India and China, or even the host, Indonesia, may be unwilling to go along.