Brazilian President Lula da Silva spoke by phone this Friday with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, declining an invitation to visit Russia on the occasion of the International Economic Forum in St Petersburg. “I thanked him for the invitation (…) and replied that I can’t go to Russia now”, Lula wrote on Twitter. However, the president reiterated Brazil’s willingness, along with India, Indonesia and China, to talk to Moscow and Kiev to help find a solution for peace.
Brazil’s president sparked controversy when he defended at the end of a visit to China last month that “the US should stop encouraging war and start talking about peace” and “the European Union should start talking about peace”. In practice, he accused the West of encouraging the continuation of the war by supplying Ukraine with weapons. Washington responded by accusing him of “parroting” Russian and Chinese propaganda without studying “the facts.” And in response, Lula clarified that he defended a “political and negotiated solution” to the war, and also condemned Ukraine’s “violation of territorial integrity”.
Lula has sought to play a mediating role in the war, but his claim that Kiev and Moscow were equally responsible for the conflict was not well received. Statements that he also softened during his visit to Portugal by explaining that Ukraine was “the great victim of the war”.
Brazil’s president said earlier this week that he was “upset” because he had not met his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky., on the sidelines of the G7 summit in Hiroshima, Japan, to which they were invited. Both leaders cited scheduling conflicts as the reason why the meeting was not possible – Zelensky met a dozen leaders in just two days – with the Ukrainian jokingly saying he may have “disappointed” the Brazilian.
“I was not disappointed. I was angry because I would have liked to have met him to discuss the matter,” Lula said. “Zelensky is of age. He knows what he’s doing”, he added, saying a meeting was scheduled for Sunday, but it was canceled because Zelensky was late and the rest of his schedule was full. However, at the press conference before leaving Japan, Lula admitted that it was not worth meeting the Ukrainian, as neither Zelensky nor Putin seem to want peace. “One wants the other to surrender. And surrender is not negotiation. Both think they can win. But peace is only possible if both sides want it,” he said.
“Serious Obstacles”
Russian diplomacy chief Sergei Lavrov told China’s special envoy Li Hui on Friday that Moscow is “committed to a political-diplomatic resolution of the conflict” but that there are “serious obstacles” to peace talks. the West. The visit of Li Hui, ambassador to Moscow for ten years, comes after visiting Zelensky in Kiev earlier this month.
On the battlefield, Russian missiles hit a clinic in Dnipro, killing at least two people and injuring 30 others. “Russian terrorists reaffirm their status as fighters against all that is human and fair,” said the Ukrainian president. The Russian Defense Ministry claimed that the targets were Ukrainian arms depots and that they had all been hit.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, meanwhile, said he would visit Finland, NATO’s newest member, on Thursday and Friday, where he would give a speech on Ukraine. The chiefs of diplomacy of the Atlantic Alliance are meeting in Oslo to prepare for the leaders’ summit in July in Vilnius. Blinken’s journey starts Monday in Sweden – which also wants to join NATO but does not get the green light from Turkey and Hungary.
Source: DN
