Putin and Obama face each other at G-20

The Russian and US presidents faced off in an hour plus long 'showdown', and expressed their unchanged positions on Syria and Ukraine, with plans again today to discuss this further in a secret 'closed door' meeting, reports Komsomol and Korrespondent.

Vladimir Putin is in Hangzhou China for the third day straight at the G20 summit. Last night, the Russian leader was in a tense two hour meeting with Merkel. The leaders talked for two hours - they talked about the implementation of the Minsk 2 agreement and the situation in Aleppo.

At the beginning of today's meeting between Putin and Obama, they were joined by US Secretary of State John Kerry, and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, and presidential aide Yuri Ushakov. Also at today's first meeting which Putin and Obama held on the sidelines of the G20 summit meeting, French President Francois Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel also attended. The parties discussed the situation in Ukraine, according to the press secretary of the White House, but did not specify details.

After half an hour, Obama and Putin talked face to face, said presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov.

"The meeting took longer than planned, they lingered, discussing Syria, mainly Ukraine and after this even Obama and Putin spoke face to face." - Peskov said.

He added that the meeting "went well", and that "the work will continue."

Putin comes to the meeting on friendly territory, after a minor controversy for the Americans in which they suffered a bit of symbolic embarrassment after Chinese officials at the airport had to remind an apparently stubborn US official with the White House press agency that 'This is our country' and 'this is our airport'.

Hollande previously announced the holding of new negotiations in the "Normandy format" in the coming weeks.