There had been speculation that Ms Bishop could confront Mr Putin at a meeting in Italy on Thursday, in a preview of his encounter with Prime Minister Tony Abbott at the G20 meeting next month in Brisbane.

Video evidence suggests Ms Bishop and Mr Putin were in the same room on Thursday night – but an Australian diplomatic source said she "never saw him".

However, she did buttonhole Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov over problems with access to the Ukraine crash site.

Ms Bishop is in Milan, at the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) – a summit aimed at improving political and economic ties between the two regions.

Mr Putin is also at the summit on his first trip inside Europe's borders since July, when flight MH17 was shot down by a missile that evidence suggests was supplied by Russia and fired by Russia-backed militants, killing 298 people including 38 Australians.

However, Mr Putin did not arrive in Italy in time for the summit's first day of meetings – he was late leaving Serbia where he had spent the day at a military parade celebrating Belgrade's liberation from Nazi Germany.

He was a no-show for a planned pre-dinner meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Ms Bishop would not confirm, through her aides, whether she had intended to take Mr Putin to task for his role in the crash of MH17 – let alone "shirt-front" him, in the words of Mr Abbott, however diplomats had anticipated they could meet at the official dinner.

In the end she met Lavrov in the margins of ASEM. They discussed the importance of access to the MH17 crash site, Fairfax was told.

Almost all of the 298 victims from the July 17 tragedy have now been identified by a forensic team in the Netherlands, from remains gathered from the crash site  - including all but two of the Australians on board.

However, remains and possessions still lie in the fields of eastern Ukraine.

A small international team returned to the crash site this week to collect personal items, but the team was reportedly fired on.

Ms Bishop attended the ASEM summit's official cocktail reception and a dinner at Milan's opulent Palazzo Reale on Thursday.

Mr Putin arrived late, after the guests (including Ms Bishop) were seated for the dinner, in the middle of a speech by European Council president Herman Van Rompuy. Mr Putin left afterwards for a meeting with the Italian president, Fairfax was told.

He is expected at a working breakfast on Friday with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and leaders from Germany, France, Britain, Italy and the European Union.

They are expected to discuss the situation in Ukraine, where an uneasy official ceasefire between Ukraine's army and the separatists is punctuated by regular, deadly clashes.

It is unclear whether Ms Bishop will get the opportunity to talk to Mr Putin during the rest of the summit.

At the ASEM meeting Ms Bishop also metDutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte and Malaysian PM Najib Razak, as well as leaders from Vietnam, Switzerland and Japan. On Friday she is expected to meet Cambodia's PM and India's foreign minister.

In a brief speech at one of the summit's opening plenary sessions, Ms Bishop spruiked the upcoming G20 summit in Brisbane, and told delegates that Australia "assumes super-power status for our lifestyle" and ranks "third in the world for environmental management".

She said the G20 would focus on supporting developing nations to improve infrastructure and grow business, "spreading the benefits of greater global growth".

Her speech continued a theme common to recent government trips abroad – last week, in a speech to a London think tank, Treasurer Joe Hockey also urged EU members to raise their gaze and look for opportunities in Asia, rather than dwell on problems within Europe's borders.