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Stephen Harper and his fellow G7 leaders have indefinitely suspended Russia from the Group of Eight until President Vladimir Putin “changes course.”

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Fears that Russia could claw back a second chunk of former Soviet territory in Europe grew on Sunday after NATO warned that Moscow’s troops were poised to move into a pro-Russian enclave of Moldova.

NATO’s top commander said that Russian troops massed on Ukraine’s eastern border were well placed to take Transdniester, a Russian-speaking enclave that has declared independence from the rest of Moldova.

About a third of Transdniester’s half-million people are ethnic Russians, many of whom want to return to rule from Moscow. To this day, the streets of the capital, Tiraspol, are decked out with statues of Lenin and other symbols of the Soviet Union, of which Moldova was a member until its break-up in 1991.