Kremlin anticipated possibility of Obama meeting postponement

The Kremlin was ready that U.S. President Barack Obama postponed the visit to Moscow, presidential aide Yuri Ushakov said. The Kremlin treats this message calmly, Ushakov said. At the same time, he said Russia is convinced that the contacts would prevail because their lack would reach the deadlock. “We were ready due to the situation around Edward Snowden,” Ushakov added. “We’ll resume contacts sooner or later,” he said, adding that the Russian-U.S. relations faced spy stories. “If we react to it every time, our relations will reach the deadlock,” the presidential aide stressed. On Wednesday, August 7, the White House released an official statement saying that President Barack Obama will participate in G20 Leaders Summit in St. Petersburg, but no bilateral meetings with Russian leader Vladimir Putin were planned. The U.S. administration said “there is not enough recent progress” in American-Russian relations to hold a bilateral summit in early September. The U.S. administration regretted Russia’s “disappointing decision” to grant U.S. National Security Agency leader Edward Snowden temporary asylum and said it was also “a factor that we considered in assessing the current state of our bilateral relationship.” “The situation shows that the U.S. is not ready to build equal relations with Russia. Throughout many years Americans declined to sign agreements on the extradition. They refuted our proposal to extradite people referring to the lack of such agreement,” Ushakov said. “The U.S. president was invited to visit Russia. The invitation remains in force. We’re ready to further work with American partners on key bilateral and international issues,” he said. The U.S. Administration said President Obama had decided to postpone the visit to Moscow slated for September 3-4 to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin due to the lack of progress in bilateral issues. U.S. Administration confirmed that Obama was still expected to take part in the G20 summit in St Petersburg on September 5-6.