Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who is on a visit to China, spoke at some length about how he envisions a path to peace in Ukraine.
“The United States needs to stop encouraging war and start talking about peace, the European Union needs to start talking about peace so that we can convince Putin and Zelensky that peace is in the interest of the whole world,” Silva said, BBC reports.
Lula is quite consistent in this position: last spring, before he was elected president, he said that Putin should not have attacked Ukraine, but the West also bears some responsibility for what happened. Last May, in an interview with Time magazine, he said that Zelensky “bears the same responsibility for the war as Putin.” He has repeatedly criticized Western countries for supplying weapons to Ukraine and publicly supporting Zelensky, claiming it “encourages war.”
Returning to the presidency, Lula began to promote a certain peace initiative, which became one of the topics of his visit to China. On the eve of the visit, he reiterated the need to stop arms supplies to Ukraine.
Brazil, heavily dependent on Russian fertilizer supplies, is one of the major producers of ammunition for Leopard 2 tanks, but has refused to supply it to Ukraine or European countries.