Washington — President Barack Obama has canceled a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow which was scheduled for September. The move comes after Russia’s recent decision to grant temporary asylum to NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.

The U.S. decision is seemingly a diplomatic snub to Russia amid heightened tensions between the two countries over recent issues listed by the White House as “missile defense and arms control, trade and commercial relations, global security issues, and human rights and civil society in the last 12 months.” 

President Barack Obama meets with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin in Los Cabos, Mexico, June 18, 2012. The leaders were in Los Cabos to attend the G20 summit. REUTERS/Jason Reed

Citing lack of progress on this and other agenda items, the White House said the president deemed it more “constructive” to postpone the summit. 

Instead of visiting Putin in Moscow, Obama will add a stop in Sweden to his early September travel itinerary. 

Moreover, Obama will not have a one on one meeting with his Russian counterpart when he stops over in St. Petersburg for the G20 summit in September, diplomats said.  

Russia responded by saying it is “disappointed” by the move, with Putin’s aide Yury Ushakov adding that the situation showed the US “is still not ready to build relations with Russia on an equal footing.” 

The cancellation comes just after Obama expressed his “disappointment” on Snowden’s asylum – and talked of Moscow slipping into “Cold War” mode despite his calls for negotiations.

“There have been times where they slip back into Cold-War thinking and a Cold-War mentality,” Obama told to Tonight Show host Jay Leno, on August 6. “And what I consistently say to them, and what I say to President Putin, is that’s the past and we’ve got to think about the future, and there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to cooperate.”