Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has condemned the “violation of Ukraine’s territorial integrity” by Russia and again called for mediation to end the war, as he came under fire for his previous comments on the conflict.
Speaking at a lunch on Tuesday with Romanian president Klaus Iohannis, Lula said a group of neutral nations must come together to help broker peace between Russia and Ukraine.
Lula faced criticism from the US over comments he made over the weekend that they were prolonging the fighting by supplying arms to Ukraine.
Earlier on Tuesday, Ukraine’s government also criticised Lula for his efforts to broker a peace deal between Kyiv and Moscow, and invited the Brazilian leader to visit the war-torn country and see for himself the consequences of the Russian invasion.
On Monday Russia’s minister of foreign affairs, Sergei Lavrov, visited Brasília, and praised Lula’s calls for a negotiated settlement.
A spokesperson for Ukraine’s foreign ministry said on Tuesday that Kyiv was watching Lula’s efforts to resolve the conflict “with interest” but criticised the Brazilian government for giving equal weight to “the victim and the aggressor”.
The spokesperson, Oleg Nikolenko, confirmed that Lula had been invited to visit Kyiv “to understand the real causes of Russian aggression and its consequences for global security”.
Lula has refused to supply weapons to Ukraine and suggested that Brazil could lead a “peace club” of neutral countries to mediate discussions between the two sides, as part of his efforts to return the South American country to international relevance after the isolation of the Jair Bolsonaro years.
A non-aligned approach is coherent with Brazil’s longstanding foreign policy tradition of peace and cooperation. But the west increasingly views Brazil’s neutrality in the war as skewed towards Russia.
“If you want to be taken seriously as a peace broker in this conflict, you need to visit both sides. Not only Russia,” said Bruna Santos, director of the Brazil Institute at the Wilson Center thinktank.
In Washington, a person familiar with the matter told Reuters US officials have privately made clear the Biden administration’s displeasure to Brazilian counterparts about Lula’s criticism of the arming of Ukraine.
Lula’s foreign policy adviser Celso Amorim called the US criticism “absurd” and insisted Brazil did not share Russia’s position.
Last month Amorim met Vladimir Putin in Moscow to discuss prospects for peace and organise Lavrov’s visit to Brasília.
Speaking on Monday alongside his Brazilian counterpart, Mauro Vieira, Lavrov praised Brazil’s efforts for peace talks and expressed gratitude for its “understanding of the genesis of the situation”.
There have been no such bilateral encounters with Ukrainian officials and Washington rebuked Lula for hosting Lavrov.
The US national security council spokesperson, John Kirby, accused Brazil on Monday of “parroting Russian and Chinese propaganda without at all looking at the facts”.
Lula had ruffled feathers with comments over the weekend suggesting both sides were responsible for the conflict, and that the US and the European Union were not committed to pursuing peace.
“Europe and the US end up contributing to the continuation of this war,” Lula said from Abu Dhabi on Sunday, having said a day earlier in Beijing that the US must “stop encouraging the war”.
Lula’s state visit to China last week, part of his diplomatic reset, will have further irked officials in Washington in light of growing international tensions.
Brazil’s foreign minister Vieira rejected the White House’s criticism. “I don’t agree at all,” he told journalists.
But after the rebukes from Kyiv and Washington, Lula on Tuesday adopted a more critical tone of the Russian invasion. “At the same time that my government condemns the violation of Ukraine’s territorial integrity, we defend a negotiated political solution,” he said, after meeting with President Klaus Iohannis of Romania.