No Obama-Putin meetings on sidelines of APEC and G20: Kremlin

MOSCOW - No bilateral meetings between Presidents Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin are scheduled during the APEC and G20 summits next week, a Kremlin spokesman said Wednesday.

"No bilateral meeting is planned for the moment," spokesman Dmitri Peskov said, according to the RIA Novosti news agency. He added that informal contacts between the US and Russian leaders were not ruled out.

The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum is to be held in Beijing on Monday and Tuesday, while the G20 will convene in Australia days later, on November 15-16.

Despite initial hesitation over Putin's attendance of the G20 due to Moscow's involvement in the conflict in eastern Ukraine, where over 4,000 people have been killed by fighting since April, the Russian leader will turn up. Western leaders are expected to confront him.

Relations between Russia and the United States have become the iciest since the Cold War after Moscow annexed Ukraine's Crimean peninsula in March. Russia is blamed for stirring the war between Kiev and the pro-Moscow separatists, including by sending its own troops across the border.

Putin in mid-October accused Obama of having a hostile attitude towards Russia, while Obama decried "Russian aggression in Europe" in a recent speech to the United Nations General Assembly.