Pressure on Putin to end the war

G20 MEETING: MOST COUNTRIES CONDEMN CONFLICT

Almost all nations affected in some way by invasion.

Russia faced mounting diplomatic pressure to end its war in Ukraine yesterday, as G20 leaders meeting in Indonesia rued the high cost of the eightmonth-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 “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 war that threatens the future of his regime.

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 they could “save thousands of lives” by pressing for a Russian withdrawal.

“I am convinced now is the time when the Russian destructive war must and can be stopped,” he said.

Putin’s delegate, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, remained in his seat throughout Zelensky’s address, two sources said.

The US and its allies sought to use the summit to broaden the coalition against Russia’s invasion and scotch Moscow’s claims of a war of East versus West.

Many “see Russia’s war in Ukraine as the root source of immense economic and humanitarian suffering in the world” said a senior US official.

Russia and its G20 allies China, India and South Africa refrained from criticising Putin’s war explicitly and the draft joint statement is replete with diplomatic fudges and linguistic gymnastics.

But it gives a growing sense of the worldwide impact of the war. G20 members Argentina and Turkey are among those worst hit by food inflation worldwide, but there was scarcely a country around the table unaffected by high food and fuel prices.

There was also a hint at growing Chinese unease with Russia’s prosecution of the war when presidents Xi and Biden met on Monday.

Both voiced opposition to the “use or threat of use” of nuclear weapons in Ukraine, the White House said. “It’s clear that the Russians are very isolated,” said one Western official.