(Bloomberg Opinion) -- Donald Trump wants to bring Russia back into the club currently known as G-7 after the country lost its membership following the 2014 Crimea annexation. But Russian President Vladimir Putin doesn’t really want back in. He’ll just try to use the situation to gauge what degree of cooperation on his part would be sufficient to get French President Emmanuel Macron to go along with Trump’s idea.
Trump, who also called for going back to the G-8 format last year, said on Tuesday that Russia’s readmission would be “appropriate” “because a lot of the things we talk about have to do with Russia.” That, of course, is a factual statement; even if, in the U.S. political discourse, Russia’s role has shrunk to election interference, Putin’s role in dismantling the U.S.-led international order is much more multifaceted. Besides, taking into account purchasing power parity, Russia is the sixth biggest global economy, so if membership in the G-7 is determined by the size of economic output, Russia, along with China, India, Indonesia and Brazil, has a better claim on it than some current members (although without the PPP correction, it’s only the 12th biggest). The Group of Seven nations are Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Britain and the U.S.
What’s different this year is that Trump appears to be actively lobbying other members of the club, especially Macron, whom he treats as a proxy for all European leaders, to bring Russia back. So far, the French president hasn’t quite caved: Unlike Trump, he wants to make Russia’s return conditional on the resolution of the Ukraine crisis in line with the Minsk agreements.
All this, however, is a bit like planning chess moves without considering how one’s opponent will play.
Putin has said many times since 2014 that Russia has moved on from the G-8 format and that he has more interest in various regional networks and the G-20, which includes the other major emerging economies in BRICS – Brazil, India, China and South Africa. The last time he said this was on Monday, after his meeting with Macron. It would be wrong to interpret these statements as sour grapes. Before Russia was expelled from the G-8 in 2014, the rest of the members tended to disagree with Putin on almost everything, anyway, and his participation in discussions didn’t help stop the Western military interventions he resented, most notably those in Iraq and Libya. Meanwhile, economic matters – such as international tax transparency, one of Putin’s favorite issues because of Russia’s capital outflow problem – lend themselves more naturally to the broader G-20 format.
Getting reinvited to the G-7 wouldn’t bring with it any tangible benefits like an easing of Western sanctions. It would merely be another forum for Putin to meet with Western leaders – but he gets regular opportunities to do so regardless.
In a way, discussions of inviting Russia back hold more promise for Putin than membership itself. The most titillating question is whether the full implementation of the Minsk agreements is necessary for Macron to side with Trump – and thus likely to get Putin reinvited, given that Japan and Italy would probably agree. If the desired progress falls short of a handover of the unrecognized pro-Russian “people’s republics” of eastern Ukraine to the Kyiv government, then perhaps the European sanctions, too, could be lifted without such a handover.
Even if the people’s republics need to be surrendered on honorable terms, will Russia really get reinvited to the G-7 without giving up Crimea? That’s an immovable red line for Putin.
So the Russian foreign ministry has reacted to the Western activity by asking for specifics. “Proposals must be formulated, if they exist, and handed over to the Russian side for consideration,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told Govorit Moskva Radio. “Now it’s hard to understand what this is about.”
Putin knows that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, despite the unusual amount of power he amassed when his party won an outright majority in parliament, would feel powerful headwinds if he tried fully to implement the Minsk agreements. They require Ukraine to change its constitution to give a special status to the eastern Ukrainian regions; this would effectively give Russia a legitimate base from which to interfere with Ukrainian politics and policy. This is extremely unpopular in Ukraine. Putin, for his part, is unwilling to let Ukraine reclaim the “people’s republics” on any other terms. But he’s amenable to playing along with Zelenskiy’s efforts to pacify eastern Ukraine – and gauging Macron’s reaction in the process.
His first move most likely will be finally to exchange prisoners with Ukraine. On Wednesday, Kommersant, a Moscow newspaper with good Kremlin sources, reported that the exchange would take place before the end of August and that Ukrainian sailors seized by Russia in the Kerch Strait late last year would be part of the deal. This would create goodwill for further talks, and perhaps an intermediate solution can be found that will move Macron to fall in with Trump.
For the G-7’s Western members, though, the big question is what they gain by letting Putin play this game with them. He’d probably explore various opportunities with Zelenskiy, anyway – and do they really want Putin in a new edition of the G-8? The West only stands to lose credibility if an invitation to the club is issued to Putin even though he has no intention to return Crimea. Such an invitation would also present him with an opportunity to decline – and wouldn’t that be embarrassing.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Philip Gray at philipgray@bloomberg.net
This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
Leonid Bershidsky is Bloomberg Opinion's Europe columnist. He was the founding editor of the Russian business daily Vedomosti and founded the opinion website Slon.ru.
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