The tension between the U.s. and Russia is at a new high, especially after Russia gave NSA leaker Edward Snowden temporary asylum and allowed him to leave the Moscow airport. Now, President Barack Obama has cancelled an upcoming meeting with Russian president Vladimir Putin.
According to the Associated Press, Obama will still go to the Group of 20 summit in St. Petersburg, but will not have a one-on-one meeting while in Russia with Putin, like he had at the Group of 8 meeting in Northern Ireland in June. The meeting was set to take place next month in Moscow, but instead Obama has added a stop in Sweden to the September schedule.
“We'll still work with Russia on issues where we can find common ground, but it was the unanimous view of the president and his national security team that a summit did not make sense in the current environment,” White House deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes told the AP.
At the meeting in June, the two looked tense and uncomfortable together and that was even before Snowden was granted a year-long temporary asylum in Russia.
According to NBC News, Obama briefly touched on Snowden while chatting with Jay Leno last night.
“I was disappointed because, even though we don’t have an extradition treaty with them, traditionally we have tried to respect if there’s a law breaker or alleged law breaker in their country, we evaluate it, and we try to work with them,” the president said. “They didn’t do that with us, and in some ways it’s reflective of some underlying challenges that we’ve had with Russia lately.”
He added that while Russia has helped with counter-terrorism, “there have been times where they slip back into Cold War thinking and a Cold War mentality.”
image: NBC