WASHINGTON: Russia should be barred from the G8 group of powerful nations for trying to ‘bully’ its neighbours and cutting political freedoms, Republican White House hopeful John McCain said in an essay released on Monday.

Writing for an upcoming issue of Foreign Affairs journal, the Arizona senator also warned America could not afford a ‘historic loss’ to Islamic extremists in Iraq and added the war could not be ‘wished away’. “We see in Russia diminishing political freedoms, a leadership dominated by a clique of former intelligence officers, efforts to bully democratic neighbours, such as Georgia, and attempts to manipulate Europe’s dependence on Russian oil and gas,” McCain wrote.

“We need a new Western approach to this revanchist Russia.

“We should start by ensuring that the G-8, the group of eight highly industrialised states, becomes again a club of leading market democracies: it should include Brazil and India but exclude Russia.” McCain said that the West should tell Moscow that Nato’s doors remained open to all democracies committed to the defence of freedom.

Once the presumed front-runner of the Republican establishment, McCain, a Vietnam war hero, downsized his operation early this year after a fundraising crunch and now lags behind other top Republicans.—AFP