Exclusive - Ukraine tensions keep Putin away from Auschwitz anniversary

Russia's President Vladimir Putin makes his annual New Year address to the nation in Moscow December 31, 2014. REUTERS/Alexei Druzhinin/RIA Novosti/Kremlin

WARSAW (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin is unlikely to join world leaders gathering at the site of the Auschwitz death camp this month because distrust caused by the conflict in Ukraine has cast a pall on arrangements to commemorate the Holocaust.

The Nazi camp where about 1.5 million people were killed, most of them Jews, became a symbol of the horrors of the Holocaust and a war that ravaged Europe. Seventy years later, conflict and political division are hampering preparations to mark the anniversary of its liberation.