US secretly planning five-nation club including Russia to sideline G7 – media
The US is secretly planning to create a five-nation power bloc with Russia, China, India and Japan to sideline the Western-dominated G7, several media outlets have reported.
The idea was reportedly outlined in a longer unpublished draft of the US National Security Strategy released by the administration of President Donald Trump last week. According to the Defense One news portal, that version circulated before the White House published the unclassified document and reportedly proposed a new group, dubbed the ‘Core 5’, as a forum for dialogue among major powers outside the G7 framework.
Under the reported plan, the five-nation format would hold regular summits, similar to the G7, each focused on a specific theme, with Middle East security – and the normalization of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia in particular – said to be first on the agenda.
The unpublished version reportedly lays out plans to downgrade Washington’s role in Europe’s defense, push NATO toward a tougher “burden-sharing” model and focus instead on bilateral ties with EU governments seen as closer to the US outlook, such as Austria, Hungary, Italy and Poland.
According to Politico, White House spokesperson Anna Kelly insisted that “no alternative, private, or classified version exists” beyond the official 33-page plan.
The Kremlin has said it has seen no official statements from Washington on the reported plan, adding that such claims should be treated with skepticism.
The reports come against the backdrop of long-running arguments about Russia’s place in existing Western-led groups. In 1998, the G7 (the US, the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Canada and Japan) was expanded to include Russia, but Moscow’s membership was suspended in 2014 after Crimea’s reunification with Russia. Trump has repeatedly said that removing Russia from the group was a “big mistake” and that had Moscow remained at the table the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022 might have been prevented.
President Vladimir Putin said in an interview with India Today this month that Russia has no plans to rejoin the G7, noting the group’s significance continues to dwindle.
