Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva declined an invitation to travel to St. Petersburg in a phone call with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin on Friday, days after an unsuccessful meeting with Ukrainian leader Volodimir Zelenski at last week’s G7 summit in Hiroshima, Japan.
“I thanked (Putin) for the invitation to go to the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum and replied that I can’t go to Russia right now,” Lula tweeted regarding this June 14-17 event.
“But I reiterated Brazil’s readiness, together with India, Indonesia and China, to talk to both sides in the conflict in search of peace,” added the leftist leader.
Lula proposes Brazil as mediator in a possible negotiation to end the war between neighboring countries, triggered by the Russian invasion of Ukrainian territory in February 2022. The leader of the Workers’ Party brought his peace proposal on his recent trip to China.
The Brazilian, who has been accused of being soft on Russia over its invasion, staged a disagreement with Zelensky on the sidelines of the G7 summit in Hiroshima last weekend when a scheduled bilateral meeting with the Ukrainian ruler fell through. .
Lula said he was “upset” at not meeting his Ukrainian counterpart. But he also said that it didn’t make much sense for him to meet Zelensky right now because neither the Ukrainian president nor Putin is showing any signs of wanting peace.
After Friday’s telephone talks, the Kremlin said in a statement that Lula “expounded his vision of possible mediation efforts seeking ways to resolve the conflict in Ukraine.”
He also shared “his impressions of the recent G7 summit” with Putin, the text adds.
For his part, Putin underlined Russia’s openness to political-diplomatic dialogue, “currently blocked by Kiev and its Western supporters”, reads the official statement. Even if the truth is that so far all attempts at mediation and dialogue have failed.
bilateral agenda
The presidents also addressed questions about the bilateral agenda and their own joint work in the framework of the BRICS groupat whose August summit in South Africa both leaders could participate.
Putin said he interrupted his attendance at a meeting with business representatives to speak with his Brazilian colleague.
He stressed that Brazil is Russia’s main economic and trading partner in Latin America, although he admitted that trade has decreased “a bit” in recent times.
“We will correct the situation as we already do with other countries and regions of the world. Here the way out is simple: go to the accounts in national currency”, he commented during the meeting.
Lula went to the G7 summit with “a message of peace” and proposed to address the war within the framework of the United Nations Security Council.
In recent months, the Brazilian leader has strongly defended the need to stop hostilities between Russia and Ukraine, e proposed the creation of a group of countries to act as a mediator between the two parties.
In turn, he has been accused by various Western countries, and by Ukraine itself, of trying to put “the aggressor and the victim on an equal footing”.
Source: AFP and EFE
Source: Clarin
Mary Ortiz is a seasoned journalist with a passion for world events. As a writer for News Rebeat, she brings a fresh perspective to the latest global happenings and provides in-depth coverage that offers a deeper understanding of the world around us.