Russia has told the United States that it will not attend a 2016 nuclear security summit, the State Department said on Wednesday, in the latest sign of frosty ties between Washington and Moscow.

Explaining why it would stay away, Moscow said it doubted the value of the summit, which is to be held in Chicago in 2016, and believed the views of states that disagreed with the event's organizers would be ignored.

Instead, Russia would focus on a similar conference to be held also in 2016 by the United Nations nuclear body, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the Russian Foreign Ministry said.