ST PETERSBURG- It was two minutes before midnight when Russian President Vladimir Putin finally entered the meeting room in the Boris Yeltsin Presidential Library, more than three hours late, to be interviewed by a dozen exhausted journalists.

His retinue seemed wearily accustomed to the late-night regimen, but Putin himself - after back-to-back meetings, a speech and an on-stage interview at his annual business conference here in his home town of St Petersburg - was fresh, fulsome and feisty.

"We won in a free fight and we are going to host the World Cup," he declared, slapping away suggestions that Russia cheated with scandal-plagued FIFA to snare the 2018 competition. "That's it!"

As for whether Russia can't, or simply won't, control its border to stop heavy weapons flowing to separatists in Ukraine: "These people got weapons with which to defend themselves. They got them in various ways."

To the suggestion by Canada's premier, Stephen Harper, that Russia be expelled formally from the Group of Eight major economies: "I don't want to offend anyone, but if the United States says Russia should return to the G8, the prime minister will change his opinion."

All of it was pure Putin, veritable Vlad. He's habitually hours late for meetings - with the pope, Germany's Angela Merkel and most others - so it's clear who's in charge before discussions begin.

He's seemingly indefatigable at age 62. He's always assertive. And he clings to perceived slights at the hands of the West, particularly the United States.