MOSCOW, August 7 (RAPSI) - Citing a lack of progress in the Russian/US bilateral agenda, the White House announced Wednesday that US President Barrack Obama will not meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin for a summit that had been planned for next month ahead of the G-20 Summit in St. Petersburg, which will be held on September 5 and 6.

The White House statement reads: “We value the achievements made with Russia in the President’s first term, including the New START Treaty, and cooperation on Afghanistan, Iran, and North Korea.  However, given our lack of progress on issues such as missile defense and arms control, trade and commercial relations, global security issues, and human rights and civil society in the last twelve months, 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.”

Edward Snowden was named as another issue that has driven a wedge in bilateral relations. The statement referred to Russia’s recent decision to extend a grant of temporary asylum to Snowden as “disappointing.” adding that it was “a factor that we considered in assessing the current state of our bilateral relationship.”

NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden was granted temporary asylum in Russia last week after having spent weeks holed up in Moscow’s Sheremyetevo Airpport.

Wikileaks later Tweeted its gratitude to the Russian people after the news broke, stating: "We would like to thank the Russian people and all those others who have helped to protect Mr. Snowden. We have won the battle--now the war."

The whistleblowing organization had tweeted that same afternoon: “We can now confirm that Edward Snowden's welfare has been continuously monitored by WikiLeaks staff since his presence in Hong Kong.” Shortly thereafter, it added: "Edward Snowden was granted temporary asylum in Russia for a year and has now left Moscow airport under the care of WikiLeaks' Sarah Harrison."

Snowden, 30, admitted to leaking a secret court order to the media in early June, according to which US telecom company Verizon was required to provide data from millions of customers to the US authorities for three months. He also claims an Internet scouring program code-named PRISM allowed the NSA to tap into nine US Internet companies and to gather all kinds of information from users, including videos, emails, searches and images.

According to RIA Novosti, Putin had said earlier that he did not want the Snowden affair to damage Russia’s relations with the United States.