The decision by President Barack Obama to take a step back from an imminent strike on Syria puts all eyes on Vladimir Putin's G20 summit where the Russian and US leaders will push for global support of their divergent policies.
The Kremlin has said that Syria is not on the official agenda of the summit to be hosted by Russia in Saint Petersburg on Thursday and Friday. But with both Moscow and Washington keen to use it as a platform to discuss a potential US-led strike against the Syrian regime, the issue is quickly becoming the elephant in the room.
The two-day meeting, to be attended by the Group of 20 heads of state or government, will also likely be the last chance for a face-to-face debate over possible military intervention before it is voted on in the US Congress, due to come back from recess on September 9.
Obama's move yesterday to push back military action until after a debate and vote by US lawmakers followed Putin's call not to take rash actions, which had some Russian politicians gloating today.
"Obama was one step away from war," tweeted the head of the Russian parliament's international affairs committee Alexei Pushkov. "He does not want to be the second George Bush with the whole world against him."
Russia has rejected claims that the regime of Bashar al-Assad has used chemical arms, and Putin, in his first public reaction to claims that Assad was behind attacks on August 21, said the United States must provide proof and avoid repeating the past "mistakes" of Iraq and other interventions.
He called on Obama to use the G20 summit as a venue to flesh out their differences over Syria, even though the Kremlin denied earlier that any bilateral meeting has been planned between the two leaders.
