HELSINKI, August 21. /TASS/. All members of the G7 need to be consulted before renewing the G8, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov stated on Wednesday, commenting on the reports claiming that US President Donald Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron have been discussing Russia’s potential return to the G8.

"There are many other members. We know how two of them feel. We need to find out the stance of other members," Peskov said.

US President Donald Trump told reporters on Tuesday that "it’s much more appropriate to have Russia in" [the G8]. According to a senior US administration official cited by CNN, Trump and his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron held a telephone conversation on Tuesday and agreed that the Russian president should be invited to the G7 summit in 2020. According to CNN, Trump plans to broach the topic at a G7 summit scheduled to take place in Biarritz, France, on August 24-26.

The G7 is a group of industrialized nations that includes Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States. The group was renamed the G8 in 1997 when Russia joined the club. However, following the 2014 events in Ukraine that created a crisis in relations between Russia and the West, the group’s western members decided to revert to the G7 model.