MOSCOW (Sputnik) — Russian President Vladimir Putin will not attend the Munich Security Conference (MSC) because it does not fit into his schedule, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Thursday.
"At the moment it just did not coincide with the openings in the president's current schedule," Peskov said commenting on Putin's decision not to attend the conference.
Earlier in the day, the chairman of the MSC, Wolfgang Ischinger, told Sputnik that the Russian leader in a friendly manner twice declined the invitation to participate in the 2016 conference to be held on February 12-14.
The MSC is an international, nongovernmental, independent conference for discussing major security issues. Founded in 1962 for consultations between NATO member countries, it now involves representatives from Central and Eastern Europe, South Asia, and the Middle East, as well as former Soviet states.
