Brazil: President Lula spoke by phone with Vladimir Putin to “strengthen ties” between the two countries

Brazil’s president-elect Luis Inacio Lula da Silva revealed today that he spoke by phone with Russian President Vladimir Putin about “strengthening ties” between the two countries.

Putin also congratulated him on his victory in the recent presidential election.

“I spoke today with Russian President Vladimir Putin who he congratulated me on my election victorywished me a good term and the strengthening of ties between our two countries,” Lula, who will assume his duties on January 1, said in a post on Twitter.

“Brazil is back, talking to everyone and committed to a world without hunger, in peace“, he added, while the Putin has been waging a war in Ukraine since February, as a result of which Russia has been isolated from much of the international community.

THE Russia and Brazil are partners within BRICS, of the group of countries which also includes China, India and South Africa.

The Kremlin, in its own statement, according to the Athens News Agency, said the two leaders expressed their optimism that “their strategic partnership (…) will be successfully developed also within the framework of BRICS».

In April, Lula sparked a backlash when he said in an interview with US magazine Time that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is “equally responsible” with Putin about the war in his country. “I see the Ukrainian president getting a standing ovation in all Parliaments (of the world). But this guy is just as responsible as Putin. A war never has only one culprit,” he had declared at the time.

Brazil’s far-right outgoing president Jair Bolsonaro, who was defeated by Lula in the second round of the presidential election on October 30, had declared the “neutrality» of the country in the Ukraine war. Bolsonaro had met Putin in Moscow on February 15, days before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, to ensure that Brazil would continue to be supplied with Russian fertiliser.