Led by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Brazil has returned to the international scene and wants to once again be an active protagonist in major global issues, including the war in Ukraine, which will soon be celebrating its first year.
The new Brazilian president intends to forge an international alliance with a view to a negotiated solution to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, an initiative that contrasts with the prevailing attitude in the West, focused on arming Ukrainian troops.
Lula categorically refuses to allow Brazilian ammunition to be used in the fight.
What he wants is to join forces with countries like China, India or Indonesia so that both sides negotiate with more impetus than has been shown up to now.
The Brazilian president is an enthusiast of multilateral diplomacy in line with his country's tradition.
And he considers it urgent to talk more about peace, about a negotiated exit after the Russian invasion of its neighbor Ukraine, than about tanks and combat planes.
From this conviction was born a third way that he has already proposed by telephone to the French president, Emmanuel Macron, and in person this Monday to the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, and that he wants to build on his next international trips to Washington and Beijing.
Lula is scheduled to meet with President Joe Biden at the White House on the 10th, and in March he will make an official visit to China —still undated— to meet Xi Jinping.
Also on the Brazilian agenda is the trip of the Brazilian Foreign Minister, Mauro Vieira, in March to New Delhi to participate in one of the preparatory meetings for the G-20 that India will host at the end of the year.
"No one is interested in this war," Lula said when he appeared on Monday with the German Scholz, the first foreign president to visit him in Brasilia since he took power a month ago.
"Just like we created the G-20 after the 2008 economic crisis, we should create a G-20 for the war in Ukraine, a G-10 or G-15," said the Brazilian before pointing out some potential members: "I think China, India, Indonesia… can play an important role in that club of those who want to build peace”.
Turkey would be another one of them, according to Celso Amorim, Lula's main foreign policy adviser and foreign minister in his first stage, who has explained the logic behind this initiative.
“Someone has to talk to the Russians, it's no use just talking to [Volodimir] Zelensky.
He has to be someone with the ability to influence and persuade.
Obviously, China seems the most capable country, but it cannot do it alone, ”he told a local television channel this week.
The idea is to forge an alliance with other countries that, due to their size and strategic importance, can change the current dynamics.
“We need fresh air.
We cannot just have the United States and the European Union on one side and Russia on the other.”
The leftist Lula has maintained the position of neutrality adopted by his predecessor, far-right Jair Bolsonaro, in the war in Ukraine.
The extreme rightist visited Vladimir Putin in Moscow on the eve of him launching the military offensive on Ukrainian territory.
Although Brazil has condemned the Russian invasion at the UN, its most common position in this conflict is abstention.
It does not participate in the sanctions against Russia, an important supplier of vital fertilizers for the powerful agricultural sector.
Along these lines, Lula's Brazil refuses to get involved in the war in Ukraine.
He does not want to participate even indirectly.
"Brazil has no interest in sending ammunition for the war between Ukraine and Russia," Lula stressed to Scholz without clarifying whether the foreign minister had asked him for authorization to use Brazilian ammunition in the tanks that Germany will send to Ukraine, as published
by Folha de S.Paulo.
.
Based on that information, Lula argued that it was not worth provoking the Russians.
Both countries are partners in the BRICS, a club of emerging countries now in decline that was created at the end of Lula's previous period.
In addition to Brazil and Russia, it is made up of India, China and South Africa.
Lula condemns the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but continues to insist on the idea that "two do not fight if one does not want to."
And in his opinion it is time for the international community to become fully involved in ending a war whose origin he claims is not entirely clear: "Some say that because NATO settled on the Russian border, others that because of the entry of Ukraine in the EU [kyiv submitted its application last June, months after the Russian invasion], other than for the land that Russia wants to occupy in Ukraine…”.
The Brazilian stressed to Scholz that "Brazil is a country of peace" and that his last war was against Paraguay, at the end of the 19th century.
He later participated in the Allied effort in World War II.
Lula also took the opportunity to recall in his press conference with Scholz that the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, which Brazil opposed with him in the Presidency, was based on "the lie about chemical weapons."
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