Brazil’s Lula fires back after Zelensky criticism

Ukraine should heed Brazil’s advice about seeking peace in the conflict with Russia, the president of the South American nation, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, has said. 

Speaking at a graduation ceremony at a diplomatic academy in Brasilia on Monday, Lula highlighted Brazil’s peaceful foreign policy and neutrality on the Ukraine conflict.

“It is important for Brazil to say that we want peace, that we don’t want war,” the president said. “Those who want to talk to us now could have talked to us before the war had started.”

Brazil “excels” at being part of a continent “that likes peace,” Lula stated, adding that “war only brings harm… it only destroys.”

Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky previously dismissed a Brazilian-Chinese peace roadmap for the conflict with Russia as “destructive” and “just a political statement.”

Beijing and Brasilia unveiled their six-point plan in May, suggesting a ceasefire along the current front line and urging Moscow and Kiev not to seek “expansion of the battlefield.” The plan also calls for the resumption of direct dialogue between the parties.

“You either support the war, or you don’t support the war. If you don’t support it, then help us stop Russia,” Zelensky told Brazilian online newspaper Metropoles last week.

Kiev insists that any settlement must be based on its terms, most importantly the recognition of Ukraine’s 1991 borders by Russia. Moscow has called this demand detached from reality and completely unacceptable.

President Vladimir Putin said last month that negotiations were even more unlikely, after Ukraine launched an incursion into Russia’s Kursk Region, reportedly targeting civilians in the process.

Kiev’s forces overran several villages and the border town of Sudzha. The offensive, however, has failed to slow the advance of Russian troops in Donbass. 

Russia and Ukraine have not held peace talks since the spring of 2022. At the time, the parties pre-agreed a deal under which Ukraine would renounce its aspirations to join NATO in favor of neutrality and restrict the size of its army. However, according to Putin, Kiev’s negotiators abruptly left the talks under orders from the West.