TOKYO, June 23 (Sputnik) — Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said in early June that the high-level meeting of the world’s seven largest economies – Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Britain, and the United States – will be held in the city of Shima, in far eastern Mie Prefecture facing the Pacific Ocean.
Responding to a reporter’s question on whether Putin will be invited to the next meeting of the G7 club, due in the Japanese city of Shima on May 26-27, the government official said that "the question remains open."
The G7 club of powerful leaders was known as G8 before the seven industrial nations bowed out of the G8 Summit in Russia’s resort city of Sochi at the height of the Ukrainian crisis in 2014 and met in Brussels without Putin instead.