Russia chill permeates G20

Russian President Vladimir Putin is to walk out of a G20 summit in Australia, an aide said yesterday, 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 programme of the second day (for Putin) is changing, it's being cut short," a source in the Russian delegation told AFP on condition of anonymity.

Putin will attend summit sessions today but will skip an official lunch and address reporters earlier than planned, the source said.

The source denied that Putin was bowing out under pressure from top Western leaders, who accused him of "bullying" ex-Soviet Ukraine.

Putin is facing huge pressure from top Western leaders over Russia's support for a separatist insurgency in eastern Ukraine, with British Prime Minister David Cameron accusing Russia of "bullying a smaller state in Europe."

During a closed-door meeting between Cameron and Putin earlier yesterday, the British prime minister had warned that the Russian strongman had a choice to make, according to a Downing Street source.

"We can either see implementation of the Minsk agreement and what follows from that in terms of an improvement of relations," a British source said, referring to peace accords.

"Or we can see things go in a very different way in terms of relations between Russian and the UK, Europe and the US."

The West accused Russia this week of sending fresh military hardware into eastern Ukraine, fuelling fears of a return to all-out conflict.

Going into the summit, US President Barack Obama said Russia's aggression against Ukraine was "a threat to the world" and called the shoot-down of MH17 over the rebel-held east of the ex-Soviet country in July "appalling".

The G20 host, Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott, for his part, accused Putin of trying to relive the "lost glories of tsarism".

Putin also called on French President Francois Hollande to "minimise the risks" between their countries after months of growing tensions.

Russia on Friday reportedly warned France of "serious" consequences unless Paris soon delivers a Mistral-class warship after handover delays on concerns over Moscow's role in the Ukraine crisis.

As tension soared on the diplomatic front, Ukraine's President Petro Poroshenko yesterday issued a decree ordering the withdrawal of all state services from the rebel-held eastern regions, a fresh acknowledgement of them effectively breaking away.

The order covers services such as schools, hospitals and emergency services, a senior security official speaking on condition of anonymity told AFP.

It comes just over a week after Kiev announced passport controls around pro-Russian separatist areas in the east, as well as the end of state payments including pensions to those in the areas.

Seven months of fighting between Ukrainian forces and pro-Moscow separatists with strongholds in eastern Ukrainian cities such as Donetsk and Lugansk have killed more than 4,100 people, the United Nations says.