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OTTAWA — Prime Minister Mark Carney said Thursday he will have one simple message for Vladimir Putin if the Russian president attends the G20 leaders’ summit this December in Florida: “get out of Ukraine.”
“He only understands strength and directness,” Carney said when asked Putin at a news conference in Thunder Bay, Ont.
“The message would be simple: get out of Ukraine, give back all of Ukraine to Ukraine, end this war which is killing more than 30,000 of your people every single month,” Carney said, adding he’s spoke numerous times in the past with Putin.
Ahead of its full-scale invasion in 2022, Russia captured Crimea from Ukraine in 2014.
U.S. President Donald Trump will host world leaders in Miami for the G20 summit and there are signs he might allow Putin to attend, despite the arrest warrant issued against the Russian leader by the International Criminal Court.
The U.S. is not a member of the ICC and the Trump administration has mounted a campaign to “dismantle” the UN court.
This past Tuesday, the Trump administration hosted Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov at a meeting of G20 finance ministers.
“It created a lot of discomfort around the table, not only from Canada, but I would say from a number of colleagues around the table,” Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne said that day.
Trump said his government invited Russia because “we like getting along with everybody.”
The United States has barred South Africa from multiple G20 events and Trump has falsely claimed the country is pursuing a genocide against white people.
Carney said Thursday it’s up to Trump to decide who attends the summit.
“It’s the host’s prerogative to invite who they invite to the G20,” Carney said, adding “there are very valid reasons” to exclude Russia.
“Russia’s unprovoked attack in 2014 was why they were ejected from the G7,” he said.
The prime minister then wrongly suggested Russia was no longer part of the G20. “The further attacks of almost five years ago now (are) why they were rejected from the G20.”
In a statement sent to The Canadian Press, Russian Ambassador Oleg Stepanov pointed out that Russia has remained a G20 member since its founding in 1999.
Putin has sent his foreign minister on his behalf to recent G20 summits. While Russia’s delegates have at times walked out of G20 events over disagreements with other states, Russia has not left the group.
In March 2014, the G7 nations – Canada, the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Japan, Italy and France – suspended Russia’s membership in what was at that time known as the G8.
Almost three years later, Russia announced it was permanently leaving the group.
Stepanov did not describe as Russia being ejected, but rather as the other seven nations leaving the G8, a move he said was made for “political reasons.”
Stepanov argued the group does not have the clout of organizations like the G20, BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.
“The G7, by contrast, has long since become a grouping that exists on paper only, perpetuated merely for its own sake. Whatever prestige it may once have enjoyed no longer carries any weight in contemporary international relations,” Stepanov wrote.
“The G8 no longer exists. And that is perhaps for the best. We have no interest in reviving it.”
In 2014, then-prime minister Stephen Harper drew praise from Australian media at a G20 summit in Brisbane when he was heard telling Putin to “get out of Ukraine” — phrasing Carney echoed Thursday.
Russia claimed at the time the exchange never happened, while Harper’s spokesman said the prime minister had told Putin: “I guess I’ll shake your hand, but I have only one thing to say to you: You need to get out of Ukraine.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 3, 2026.
Dylan Robertson, The Canadian Press
