Russia: Putin wasn’t invited to Auschwitz ceremony
Kremlin says president won't attend Holocaust commemoration in Poland; move comes amid heightened tensions over Ukraine
MOSCOW — The Kremlin says President Vladimir Putin hasn’t been invited to a ceremony in Poland marking the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp by Soviet troops.
The Interfax news agency quoted Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov as saying Tuesday that Putin hasn’t received an invitation and therefore will not attend the event later this month.
Russia’s ties with the West have plummeted to their lowest point since the Cold War times over the Ukrainian crisis. The United States and the European Union have imposed sanctions against Moscow over its annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula and support for a pro-Russia insurgency in eastern Ukraine.
Poland has been one of the harshest critics of the Kremlin’s policy, and relations between the two countries have been tense.
Copyright 2015 The Associated Press.