MOSCOW: Russia’s seat at former G7 summit meetings a few years ago may have been a kindly and clearly political gesture to then President Boris Yeltsin — but his successor, Vladimir Putin, is today on a far stronger footing in the new G8 format.
Not that Russia is even close, financially speaking to the seven other members of the club of leading industrial nations even through Putin has set a target of doubling gross domestic product in the next decade from the 2002 level of $348 billion.
While GDP per capita among the other G8 members runs at some 23,000 to 30,000 dollars, in Russia the figure is just over a mere $2,000 per head.
But today, ability to tackle global threats counts as much as economic muscle, and former Cold War adversary Russia is recognized as a country G8 members can do business with in many spheres.
As President Putin put it in advance of this Sunday’s G8 summit in Evian: “Russia is becoming more transparent, more understandable, and more predictable.”
While G7/G8 history stretches almost three decades, Russian involvement began in 1991 with the guest appearance of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev at the London summit.
Post-Soviet Russia was first invited to attend in 1994, in a nod of support to the new President Yeltsin as he cut the country free from its Communist legacy. Russia was given member status in Denver in 1997, but was not still not entitled to attend all G8 meetings.
Through the 1990s Russia was more of a burden than an asset, coming to summits with country-specific problems — to seek new credits or restructuring of its external debt, ask for a cessation of discrimination toward its goods and for resolution of nuclear security problems.
In the 21st century this changed. At the Okinawa 2000 summit, Russian debt and credits were not on the agenda for the first time. The Kananaskis summit in Canada last year cemented the country’s place in the group by awarding it chairmanship for the 2006 summit.
Moscow now holds fourth place in writing off debts of the world’s poorest countries and first place in terms of the share of the money written off in terms of its GDP. The $3.5 billion of mainly Soviet-era debts Russia wrote off last year was equal to one per cent of GDP.
In the current nuclear crisis around North Korea, cordial ties with Pyongyang deal Moscow a trump card. Its hand improves further through its traditional good relations with a number of Middle Eastern countries, its close relationship with China as well as extensive influence in Central Asia.
But the fly in the ointment is Russian nuclear power cooperation with Iran.
Russia’s G8 credibility has also been boosted with events like its removal last year by the international Financial Action Task Force from the list of countries blacklisted for inaction against money-laundering. Russian tax reform and other economic restructuring has also gained recognition from G8 partners.—dpa
