BRISBANE, AUSTRALIA - Russian President Vladimir Putin is to walk out of a G20 summit in Australia, an aide said Saturday, after he faced scorn and scepticism from Western leaders over Ukraine despite venturing to paper over Europe’s deepest chill in relations since the Cold War. The abrupt decision threatens to upend the annual summit’s focus on revamping the global economy and fixing sores such as the Ebola epidemic in west Africa.  “The programme of the second day (Sunday) is changing, it’s being cut short,” a source in the Russian delegation told AFP on condition of anonymity.
Putin will attend summit sessions on Sunday but will skip an official lunch and address reporters earlier than planned, the source said, adding: “Lunch is more of an entertainment.”
The Group of 20 nations, which includes the United States and China, found agreement in vowing to “extinguish” the Ebola outbreak - albeit without any promise of hard cash - as it worked to reboot growth in the world economy after the shock of the 2008 financial crisis.
But Ukraine represents the most pressing test of the club’s ability to marry its economic heft to diplomatic troubleshooting, given the Cold War-style divisions between Russia and the West exposed by the former Soviet satellite’s separatist crisis.  There was no immediate comment from the G20’s Australian hosts or other delegations such as US President Barack Obama’s to Putin’s decision, which came after some testy exchanges in Brisbane on Saturday.  Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper was approached by Putin to shake hands. Harper said, according to Canadian media: “Well, I guess I’ll shake your hand, but I only have one thing to say to you: you need to get out of Ukraine.”
Before his own tense meeting with Putin on the G20 sidelines, British Prime Minister David Cameron said Russia faced a choice, with one option to implement an agreement to allow stability to return to Ukraine free of Moscow’s meddling. “It’s important to warn of the dangers if Russia continues to head in the other direction,” Cameron said, bluntly warning that Putin had failed to serve Russia’s own interests by exposing it to punishing Western sanctions.
“If that path continues and if that destabilisation gets worse, the rest of the world, Europe, America, Britain, will have no choice but to take further action in terms of sanctions,” he said.
G20 host Tony Abbott went into a week of Asia-Pacific summitry vowing to confront Putin, particularly over the downing of a Malaysia Airlines passenger jet over Ukraine in July. In the event, on Saturday, the Australian prime minister was all smiles as he posed for a handshake with a similarly grinning Putin - before the two leaders were photographed holding koala bears together.  However, the koala diplomacy was followed by less cuddly formal talks on the G20 sidelines between Putin and Western leaders including Cameron and French President Francois Hollande.
Meanwhile, US President Barack Obama on Saturday warned of the dangers of outright conflict in Asia, as China squares off against rival claimants over disputed territories, but vowed that Washington would remain anchored in the region. In the talk, given on the margins of the G20 summit, the president reviewed the stunning economic progress seen in East Asia since World War II.
“Yet alongside this dynamism, there are genuine dangers that can undermine this progress,” he said, citing North Korea for one and adding: “Disputes over territory - remote islands and rocky shoals - that threaten to spiral into confrontation.”
China is locked in dispute with four Southeast Asian countries over lonely outcrops in the South China Sea and with Japan over another set of islets.
Obama repeated his insistence given in Beijing this week, after talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping, that the United States welcomes the rise of China provided it is a peaceful and responsible player on the world stage. But China, he stressed in Brisbane, must “adhere to the same rules as other nations, whether in trade or on the seas”.