While it appears that the Edward Snowden saga triggered President Obama to cancel a planned summit meeting in Moscow next month with Russian President Vladimir Putin, analysts say the president simply did not want to waste time knowing that nothing worthwhile could be accomplished between the two leaders if he made such a trip.

On "The Tonight Show," Obama noted Russia's decision to grant the National Security Agency leaker asylum for one year, suggesting the country's compliance with Snowden's request was a factor in his decision to forgo meeting with Putin. However, Snowden's role in the cancellation obscures a basic reality--that relations between the U.S. and Russia have become so frosty it doesn't appear the two leaders could actually accomplish enough to merit such a high-profile meeting.

Over the last four years, U.S.-Russian relations have fractured over issues like the Kremlin's support for Syria and an intensifying crackdown on dissent in Russia.

"The question the White House has been asking is not about whether Russia is going to give us anything on Snowden ... but what will come out of a summit in Moscow that will be useful to the president's agenda on arms control, missile defense and our economic relationship," said Steven Pifer, a longtime U.S. diplomat who served in Russia, to POLITICO. "What I'm hearing from administration officials is that over the last month they've had no resonance, no response back from the Russians."

White House Spokesman Jay Carney also claims that Snowden's case played a role in the decision, however, he did not say how significant it was.

"Given our lack of progress on issues such as missile defense and arms control, trade and commercial relations, global security issues, and human rights and civil society in the last twelve months, we have informed the Russian government that we believe it would be more constructive to postpone the summit until we have more results from our shared agenda," Carney said at a press conference this week. "Russia's disappointing decision to grant Edward Snowden temporary asylum was also a factor that we considered in assessing the current state of our bilateral relationship."

Pifer points out that the Obama administration was wrong to indicate there was a real chance the Russians might return Snowden.

"Part of the problem is of the administration's own making ... The administration in the first few days mishandled it and created an expectation that there was no way they were going to fulfill," Pifer said. "In diplomacy, it's generally not a good thing to ask a government to do something they're never ever going to do, particularly [when] if the roles were switched you would never, ever do it."

Obama told Jay Leno Tuesday that Russia did not use diplomacy in handling Snowden's case, stating, "Traditionally, we have tried to respect if there's a lawbreaker or an alleged lawbreaker in their country, we evaluate it and we try to work with them. They didn't do that with us," the president said.

However, analysts say the Russians don't view the Snowden matter as a legal issue. Instead, it's more of an intelligence-related case that the two countries have usually handled quite differently from those involving ordinary criminals.

"The Russian view is this is a defector case and it's silly to ask for a defector back," Pifer explained. "If we had a Russian version of Snowden here, we would never consider sending him back."

Plus, the U.S. has granted asylum to thousands of Russian nationals, even some that the Russians consider terrorists, in recent years. In cases that relate to espionage, the U.S. frequently dismisses Russian demands to return their citizens for trial.

In response, Russia has voiced disappointment with Obama's decision to cancel his Moscow summit, however, the nation said it remains ready to cooperate on bilateral and international issues, reports Al Jazeera.

Putin's foreign affairs adviser, Yuri Ushakov, told reporters on Wednesday that Obama's decision reflected the U.S.' inability to develop relations with Moscow on an "equal basis." Meanwhile, he said the invitation to the U.S. president to visit Moscow still stands.