Andriy Parubiy, the first deputy speaker of Ukraine's Verkhovna Rada (parliament) spoke to USA TODAY during a three-day visit to Washington Sept. 24, 2015.(Photo: Oren Dorell, USA TODAY)

WASHINGTON – A planned meeting between President Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in New York next week will send the wrong message and should be scrapped, a leading member of the Ukrainian parliament told USA TODAY.

“If it happens it will be a very bad sign,” Andriy Parubiy, first deputy speaker of the Ukrainian Verkhovna Rada, said Thursday during a visit to Washington. “It will confirm that Putin is going in the right direction. The more people he kills, the more tanks he sends to another country, the more important he becomes.”

White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Ukraine will be Obama’s top priority when he meets Putin, though Russia’s recent military build-up in Syria will also be on the agenda.

The United States led international sanctions to punish Russia for its intervention in eastern Ukraine, where Russian-backed separatists have seized territory in April 2014 and started battling Ukrainian government forces. While a cease-fire has held since the beginning of September, U.S. officials say thousands of Russian troops and heavy weapons remain on Ukrainian soil, something Russia denies.

The war in Ukraine was preceded by Russia’s seizure and annexation of the Crimean region of Ukraine, with an army of soldiers in green uniforms and no insignias, known in Ukraine as “green men.” Putin is breaking all the security guarantees of the Western world’s rules-based diplomacy, Parubiy said.

While the United States and Russia disagree on Ukraine, they are holding military talks on Russia’s military build-up in Syria, where Russia says it seeks to back up Syrian President Bashar Assad against Islamic State militants that a U.S.-led coalition is also fighting. U.S. Secretary of Defense Ash Carter said Thursday that the USA sees Assad as part of the problem in Syria, and wants Russia to agree to work toward Assad’s removal from power at the same time it fights the Islamic State.

Carter spoke at the Pentagon during a press conference with Ukrainian Minister of Defense Stepan Poltorak. Ukraine has been seeking defensive weapons from the United States, but such lethal assistance "was not on the table" this week, Poltorak said.

In Syria, Putin is trying to show himself as a constructive partner to the West against the reviled Islamic State, Parubiy said.  “As a balance he might ask for a policy of closed eyes on what’s happening in Ukraine, and the removal of Crimea from the daily agenda,” he said.

“Putin is a global threat, and Ukraine,” a former Soviet republic, “is on the front line of that threat,” Parubiy said. “If we don’t stop him decisively, his green men will show up in every part of the world.”

Contributing: David Jackson

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