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Press TV has interviewed William Blum, author and historian, Washington, about the unprecedented act by US President Barak Obama to cancel a scheduled meeting with his Russian counterpart, Putin due to dispute over NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.

- How do you assess this latest cooling of relations between Russia and the US?

- I don’t think it's so important. They're both playing a game.

Secretary of State John Kerry said that what Snowden did is not very important. He makes light of it and yet in the same breath he announces very tough sanctions against Snowden.

So, with these people, it's all propaganda. They don't want to give him any credit for having done something important on the one hand; on the other hand they want to punish him for doing something for which they would have you believe is horrible. They want to have it both ways.

- Is Russia in a sense being punished for taking a stand here?

- Well, if you can call this punishment; if having to not meet with Barak Obama is punishment, then its punishment; but I don't think it matters much at all.

Barak Obama is like any American official. What comes out of his mouth is not to be taken very seriously. It's all for the moment, for the moment to win propaganda points he'll say this or he'll say that, whatever sounds good at the moment. The same with John Kerry, whatever sounds good at the moment.

You can't read into these statements too much. These people are not intellectual, they're not statesmen, they're politicians and they just say what they think will win them points for their side at the moment.

- Speaking about winning points then, what do you think was behind the Russian decision to actually grant Snowden asylum?

- I think even though Putin doesn't admit it, I think that he's enjoying making the US look bad; and he has lots of reasons for wanting to do that.

For a long time he's been saying, he's been complaining about the United States surrounding Russia with military bases and getting the former Soviet republics to become members of NATO. Russia is being surrounded by NATO and US bases. This is like the Cold war.

And so Putin would like to win a few points himself.