(ANSA-AFP) - NUSA DUA, NOV 15 - Russia faced mounting diplomatic pressure to end its war in Ukraine Tuesday, as G20 leaders meeting in Indonesia rued the high cost of the eight-month-old conflict. In a draft communique, countries including Russia deplored the impact of "the war in Ukraine" -- a conflict that "most members strongly condemned". The group is also expected to declare that "the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons" is "inadmissible", a veiled rebuke of President Vladimir Putin who has repeatedly raised the spectre of nuclear conflagration. Putin was forced to skip the summit as he reckons with a string of embarrassing battlefield defeats and a grinding war that threatens the future of his regime. Rubbing salt in his wounds, Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky -- fresh from a visit to liberated Kherson -- delivered an impassioned video appeal to G20 leaders. Zelensky told leaders from China's Xi Jinping to America's Joe Biden that they could "save thousands of lives" by pressing for a Russian withdrawal.

Putin's delegate, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, remained in his seat throughout Zelensky's address, two diplomatic sources told AFP. The veteran diplomat had preparations for the summit disrupted by two trips to a Bali hospital in as many days for an undisclosed ailment. (ANSA-AFP).