WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama on Wednesday canceled an upcoming summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin, a rare, deliberate snub that reflects the damage done by the Edward Snowden case to an important relationship already in decline.
Obama had planned to visit Moscow for a symbolic one-on-one Kremlin meeting with Putin in advance of next month’s Group of 20 economic summit in St. Petersburg, Russia. In unusually blunt terms, the White House announced Wednesday that Obama will skip the Moscow stop because there is too little hope of a productive meeting.
“Following a careful review begun in July, we have reached the conclusion that there is not enough recent progress in our bilateral agenda with Russia to hold a U.S.-Russia summit in early September,” said White House press secretary Jay Carney in a statement.
With that announcement, Obama effectively wrote off more than a year of effort to build cooperation with Putin, a shrewd but famously irascible politician with a deep suspicion of U.S. motives.
Gone, too, are most of the administration’s first-term hopes of a remade U.S.-Russian partnership — the so-called “reset” — that emphasized common approaches to global problems despite acknowledged policy differences.
On Tuesday, Obama told Jay Leno of “The Tonight Show” that he was frustrated by Russia’s protection of Snowden, a former National Security Agency contractor who is wanted on espionage charges after leaking to the media highly classified documents about U.S. surveillance programs. Snowden last week was granted temporary asylum in Russia for up to a year.
“There are times when they slip back into Cold War thinking and Cold War mentality,” Obama said. “What I continually say to them and to President Putin — that’s the past.”
Carney also cited a “lack of progress” with Russia on a broad range of issues including missile defense and arms control, trade and commercial relations, and human rights.
“We have informed the Russian government that we believe it would be more constructive to postpone the summit until we have more results from our shared agenda,” Carney said.
Although Putin clearly wanted the prestige of an at-home summit with his U.S. counterpart, he was apparently unwilling to offer much in exchange for it.
Russia holds a veto at the U.N. Security Council, where differences with the United States over international problems are often on display. Russia is also a member of nearly every major international diplomatic, political or economic forum, wielding outsize influence compared with its true military or economic heft in the post-Cold War era.
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and Secretary of State John Kerry will still hold a planned meeting Friday with Russia’s defense and foreign ministers. The deepening civil war in Syria, where Russia and the United States are backing opposing sides, will be a central topic.
Instead of visiting Moscow ahead of the G-20 summit, Obama will travel to Stockholm on Sept. 4, the White House said. Obama and Putin will see each other at the summit in St. Petersburg.
For weeks, the White House had signaled it was considering canceling the Kremlin visit. “In the specific areas that we have set out to make progress with the Russian government, we just hadn’t,” said a senior Obama administration official, who requested anonymity to discuss diplomatic issues. The official noted that the Obama’s national security advisers all agreed with the cancellation.
Putin’s foreign affairs adviser told reporters that the Kremlin was disappointed with the cancellation and blamed it on the Snowden affair, which he said was not Russia’s fault.
“Russia is ready to continue working with its U.S. partners on all key items on the bilateral and multilateral agendas,” Yuri Ushakov said.
Sources of tension
Other than the case of National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden, some issues frustrating U.S.-Russian relations:
Syria: Russia has shielded Syrian President Bashar Assad from international sanctions and provided him with weapons, while the U.S. says Russia’s support is allowing Assad to cling to power.
Missile defense: Russians see the U.S. missile defense system planned for Europe as a threat to the viability of their own nuclear arsenal.
Human rights: Americans object to the way Russian leaders have tried to silence critical voices. In April, the U.S. imposed financial sanctions on 18 Russians over human-rights violations. Russian President Vladimir Putin bristles at the American criticism.
Adoption: Putin signed a law last year banning American adoptions of Russian children. The move was viewed in the U.S. as retaliation for a law that set in motion the human-rights sanctions against Russian officials.
Civil society: Putin has waged a campaign of harassment and intimidation against non-governmental organizations that take up causes such as protecting human rights, helping immigrants, defending voters’ rights or promoting environmental protection.
Gay rights: The U.S. is criticizing a new Russian law that imposes fines and up to 15 days in prison for people accused of spreading “propaganda of nontraditional sexual relations” to minors. Russian officials say the law will be enforced during the 2014 Olympics in Sochi.
The Associated Press
