It may have looked in the West like Russian President Vladimir Putin fled this weekend’s G20 summit early after being berated over Ukraine.

But it was a different story in Russia, where pliant media praised Putin for being courageous enough to “enter the lion’s den”, stand up to his critics and defend national interests, and accepted his excuse that he faced a long trip home.

State TV said the G20 had gone better for Putin than Western media had predicted and that US President Barack Obama was the leader left isolated by two summits in a week.

One journalist, Dmitry Kiselyov, said the US “uni-polar” vision of the world was clearly dead and asked whether Obama’s aim was to destroy Russia.

Putin plans to behave in Ukraine as he thinks is necessary, not as the G20 leaders expect him to

“Putin behaved unusually cold-bloodedly: he did not act like hysterical commentators of all stripes had suggested, praised the organisers of the G20 summit and called the forum ‘constructive’,” the pro-Putin Izvestia newspaper wrote.

Whether or not Obama or Putin emerged on top from the G20 summit in Brisbane and an Asia-Pacific summit the week before, one thing seems clear: anyone who thought the Russian leader would soon blink over Ukraine was wrong.

There is no sign of him changing tack and a European Union decision not to toughen sanctions on Russia yesterday is likely to be seen in Moscow as a victory for Putin.

Political commentator Georgy Satarov, a former political adviser to late President Boris Yeltsin, said Putin had quite deliberately snubbed the West by leaving the G20 summit early.

“I think that in this case the sign was that Putin plans to behave in Ukraine as he thinks is necessary, not as the G20 leaders expect him to,” he said.

Putin has sought to keep the world guessing about his every move in the Ukraine crisis, but one of his overall aims has long appeared to be to prevent the country of 46 million moving further out of Moscow’s orbit and closer to mainstream Europe.