The University of the Peloponnese will have to wait to give Russian President Vladimir Putin an honorary doctorate to reward him for ties with Greece – which he refused to help during a crushing financial crisis.

The Russian leader, during whose tenure opposition leaders have been banned from running and a number of journalists have been killed, said he couldn’t make it for the scheduled Feb. 22 event at the school in Kalamata, said Kathimerini, reporting that sources that weren’t identified will propose a postponement but not cancel the idea.

The paper’s report that the university’s Department of History, Archaeology and Cultural Resources Management had planned to honor the Russian leader had drawn some criticism.

Prime Minister and Radical Left SYRIZA leader Alexis Tsipras reached out to Putin after taking power in January, 2015 on promises to reject international creditors and was hoping for a Russian bailout instead but was rebuffed.

Nevertheless, there remain ties between the two with Tsipras being a former Communist Youth party leader before deferring to Greece’s creditors and Capitalists and reneging on anti-austerity promises to get a third economic rescue package, this one for 86 billion euros ($107.3 billion) he said he would never seek nor accept but did both.