Vladimir Putin has declined to meet Georgia’s foreign minister sent to Russia for the first high-level talks with giant neighbor in a bid to mend the two states’ chilly ties, RIA news agency said on Tuesday.

“On the eve of Georgian Foreign Minister Gela Bezhuashvili’s visit to Moscow, the issue of his meeting with the Russian President was in works,” a senior Kremlin official told the agency. “But as the Kremlin official stressed, Vladimir Putin rejected the idea of such a meeting,” RIA said.

According to the Reuters news agency, Bezhuashvili arrived in Moscow on Tuesday evening. Igor Ivanov, secretary of Russia’s Security Council, said earlier on Tuesday he would meet Bezhuashvili, as would Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

Russia cut transport and postal links with Georgia after Tbilisi briefly detained four Russian army officers on spying charges in September.

According to the media reports, some Georgians have been deported from Russia, Georgian businesses have been shut down and police have asked some schools to provide lists of pupils with Georgian-sounding names.

Moscow has been irked by Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili’s pursuit of NATO and EU membership, while Georgia accuses Russia of backing separatists by giving aid and Russian passports to residents of the breakaway territories.

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