The Brazilian president called on countries that supply arms to Ukraine to stop “encouraging” war during a visit to China. Brazil and China want to appear as mediating powers in the conflict in Ukraine.
Washington must stop “encouraging war” in Ukraine, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said in a final address to China, before flying to the United Arab Emirates where he is expected on Saturday.
“The United States must stop encouraging war and start talking about peace, the European Union must start talking about peace,” Lula told reporters in Beijing on Saturday.
The international community will thus be able to “convince” Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky that “peace is in the interest of the whole world”, he added.
Brazil wants to mediate
Lula, who returned to power in January after serving two terms between 2003 and 2010, paid a two-day visit to China to strengthen economic ties with its main trading partner. He also took the opportunity to affirm that Brazil was “back” on the international scene, and hopes to play the role of mediator in the conflict in Ukraine.
Unlike several Western powers, China and Brazil have never imposed financial sanctions on Russia and are both trying to position themselves as mediators. Especially since China is under growing international pressure to weigh on Moscow and bring it to the negotiating table.
With this in mind, Lula defends the idea of creating a group of countries whose goal would be to work for peace in Ukraine, and before his visit to China, he had promised that this group would be “created” at his feedback.
“Patience” and “dialogue”
Asked about this idea following his meeting with the Chinese president, Lula did not give further details.
“Patience is needed” to talk with Putin and Zelensky, he said simply. “But above all, we must convince the countries which supply weapons, which encourage war, to stop”.
According to state-run New China news agency, Lula and Xi Jinping said ‘dialogue and negotiation’ were the ‘only possible way’ to resolve the crisis, calling on other nations to play a ‘constructive role’ for a settlement policy.
Critics of Western powers
The Brazilian president’s trip was an opportunity for the leader to criticize Western powers. He criticized on Thursday the omnipresence of the US dollar in international trade and accused the International Monetary Fund (IMF) of “asphyxiating the economies of countries like Argentina”.
Also, Xi Jinping and Lula called on developed countries to keep their promise to provide 100 billion dollars a year to the poorest countries to fight against the effects of climate change. Lula sealed, with this visit, a close economic and diplomatic agreement with China, hammering that this deepening was not negotiable.
He will now have to manage a delicate balancing act between the United States, with which Brasilia maintains strong ties, and China. “I am convinced that our relationship with China is not necessarily likely to cause friction with the United States,” he said, however.
