Russian President Vladimir Putin has canceled a planned visit to France next week, the Kremlin said Tuesday, in an apparent snub to French President François Hollande, who suggested Moscow was guilty of war crimes in Syria, reports CNN.
Tensions have been rumbling between the two leaders since the weekend, when Russia vetoed a UN Security Council resolution aimed at ending Syrian regime airstrikes on Aleppo and allowing humanitarian aid into the city. France and Spain had put forward the resolution.
"The president has made a decision to cancel this visit [to Paris]," Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Russian state-run news agency TASS.
Putin was scheduled to attend events linked to the opening of a Russian religious and cultural center, but the trip was canceled because the events "fell out of the program".
But a French government spokesperson told CNN that Putin canceled because he did not agree with Hollande's request that the meeting be dedicated to Syria.
Hollande had earlier suggested to French TV station TF1 that he was mulling whether to cancel the meeting with Putin, saying that those behind the bombardment of Aleppo - alluding to Syria and Russia - had committed "war crimes" in the Syrian city and should be held accountable at the International Criminal Court.
Putin was scheduled to visit Paris on October 19th.
Debating whether to meet Putin, Hollande had told TF1: "I have asked myself that question: Is it useful? Is it necessary? Could we do something that pushes him as well and stop what they're doing with the Syrian regime -- that is to say the help they are providing to the Syrian regime, which sends bombs to the population of Aleppo?
"If I receive him, I would tell him that it is unacceptable, that it is bad even for the image of Russia. What I tell them, is that these populations are populations that are today victims of war crimes and those who commit those acts will have to pay for their responsibility in front of the International Criminal Court."