Syria crisis: No clear winner in Russia-US G20 duel

Both sides have claimed victory in this G20 gladiatorial contest over Syria, but identifying who is on which team is not straightforward.

So who backed Russia and who backed the United States?

According to President Vladimir Putin, the outcome was not a 50/50 split, but a balance of opinion in Russia's favour.

He claimed that, at the G20 dinner on Syria, only four countries - France, Turkey, Canada and Saudi Arabia (plus a British prime minister rebuffed by his own parliament) - had backed America.

Whereas siding with Russia in rejecting military strikes on Syria, he says, were seven nations: China, India, Indonesia, Argentina and Brazil, as well as South Africa and Italy.

Yet not all the Russian president's views on Syria were endorsed by other G20 leaders.

Who else in St Petersburg publically declared, as he did, that Syria's "so-called chemical weapons attack" was in fact "a provocation staged by rebels, in hope of winning extra backing from their foreign backers"?

In making that categorical claim, the Russian leader left little room for compromise and ended up looking, perhaps, somewhat isolated.