MOSCOW (Sputnik) — Two members of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party believe that Russia "should return directly to G8," without any kind of interim arrangement like the one proposed by Germany's Free Democrats (FDP).
FDP leader Christian Lindner has suggested that Russia could return to the G8 with the help of an interim "7+1" format.
Dr. Anton Friesen, a special representative of the Russian Germans’ working group in Bundestag from AfD, has also expressed support for Russia's direct return noting that "dialogue is better than confrontation."
The G8 is rather an informal group comprising the leaders of the eight highly industrialized nations, who meet every year in the form of summits. It was created in the 1970s to tackle global problems through dialogue and cooperation. As of early 2014, the club included Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, the United States and Russia.
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In 2014, seven of the states boycotted the summit in Russia's Sochi, citing disagreements over the Ukrainian crisis and reformatted the G8 into the G7 again.
In 2016 Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov stressed that Moscow did not intend to take any steps to get back to the G8 group. In January 2017, Moscow decided to leave the bloc permanently. Peskov said that the issue of the restoration of the G8 format with Russia’s participation was not under discussion in Moscow as Russia prioritized work in the G20 format which embraces a wider range of participants including 20 world emerging economies.
