Obama axes Moscow trip as ties with Putin sour President Barack Obama has cancelled 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. Mr Obama had planned to visit Moscow for a symbolic one-on-one Kremlin meeting with Mr Putin before next month's G20 economic summit in St Petersburg. In unusually blunt terms, the White House announced Mr 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 US-Russia summit in early September," White House press secretary Jay Carney said in a statement. Lack of progress in relations: US President Barack Obama, left, has put off a Moscow summit with Russia's Vladimir Putin. With that announcement, Mr Obama effectively wrote off more than a year of effort to build co-operation with Mr Putin, a shrewd but irascible politician with a deep suspicion of US motives. Gone, too, are most of the administration's first-term hopes of a remade US-Russian partnership - the so-called "reset" - that emphasised common approaches to global problems despite acknowledged policy differences. On Tuesday, Mr Obama told Jay Leno on The Tonight Show that he was frustrated by Russia's protection of Mr Snowden, a former National Security Agency contractor who is wanted on espionage charges after leaking highly classified documents about US surveillance programs. Last week, Mr Snowden 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," Mr Obama said. What I continually say to them and to President Putin - that's the past. Mr Carney also cited a "lack of progress" with Russia on a broad range of issues including missile defence and arms control, trade and commercial relations and human-rights issues. Although Mr Putin clearly wanted the prestige of an at-home summit with his US counterpart, he was apparently unwilling to offer much in exchange for it. Russia holds a veto at the United Nations Security Council, where differences with the US over international problems are often on display. Russia is also a member of nearly every major international diplomatic, political or economic forum, wielding outsized influence compared to its true military or economic weight in the post-Cold War era. Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel and Secretary of State John Kerry will still hold a planned meeting in Washington on Friday with Russia's defence and foreign ministers. The civil war in Syria, where Russia and the US are backing opposing sides, will be a central topic. A proposed peace conference sponsored jointly by Russia and the US has been shelved indefinitely, and Russia has long opposed stronger punishment for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad at the UN.