The world’s seven largest economies have suspended their 16-year collaboration with Moscow, kicking Russia out of the Group of Eight.  This is retaliation for Russia’s takeover of the Crimean Peninsula and the continued menacing military exercises just over Ukraine’s eastern border.

The move, made formal in a document called the “Hague Declaration” cancels Russian President Vladimir Putin’s planned summit of G8 leaders at Sochi in June, and a foreign ministers’ meeting in Moscow in April.  The G7 said it will meet in Brussels instead, and cautioned Russia that its barrel of economic sanctions is far from empty.

“We remain ready to intensify actions including coordinated sectoral sanctions that will have an increasingly significant impact on the Russian economy, if Russia continues to escalate this situation,” according to the Hague Declaration.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov feigned indifference, saying, “The G8 is an informal club, with no formal membership, so no one can be expelled from it.  If our western partners believe that such format is no longer needed, so be it.”

Russia’s membership in the exclusive club was bequeathed after the end of the Cold War in 1998 to facilitate East-West cooperation and put the old rivalries to rest.