12.23pm GMT

Leaders meeting in the Hague for the Nuclear Security Summit will today discuss excluding Russia from the G8, my colleague Andrew Sparrow reports from the Number 10 lobby briefing:

Downing Street said that world leaders will discuss excluding Russia from the G8 at a meeting in the Hague this afternoon. David Cameron and other leaders are in the Hague for a meeting of the Nuclear Security Summit and at 5.30pm they will meet as the G7 to discuss the situation in Ukraine.

The prime minister's spokesman said this was the first meeting of G7 heads of government since the G7 was turned into the G8 when Russia was included in 1998. He said the fact that the meeting was taking place was "part of a clear message that is being sent to the Russian government". He went on:



All the preparatory work for the G8 meeting at Sochi has been suspended. I'm sure the future of the G grouping is probably the main item for their discussion later this afternoon.

The spokesman also said that, in the light of events in Ukraine, Cameron thought it was right for work to be done at the EU level on preparing what further measures might need to be taken against Russia.

But the spokesman said that, although the storming of Ukrainian military bases on Crimea by Russian soldiers was seen as a failure to de-escalate the crisis, it was not viewed as further de-stabilisation – the threshold set by the EU as justifying further anti-Russia measures, involving full economic and trade sanctions.

The politics live blog is here.

The Group of Seven (G7) countries are the US, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Japan.