The President of the Russian Senate, Valentina Matviyenko, confirmed Wednesday that she will lead the Russian delegation to the inauguration of Brazilian President-elect Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, which will be held on January 1, 2023 in Brasilia.
Matviyenko said that he had received instructions from Russian President Vladimir Putin «to head» the delegation, of which no further details were provided as to who else will be part of it, reports TASS news agency.
The announcement comes a day after Lula da Silva told on Twitter that he had had a conversation with President Putin, who congratulated him on his victory in the elections and wished him a good government, in addition to the «strengthening» of relations between the two countries.
«Brazil is back, seeking dialogue with everyone and committed to the search for a world without hunger and with peace,» wrote the president-elect.
Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine ten months ago, Brazil has been one of the few countries that has chosen to maintain a manifestly neutral position, although the still president Jair Bolsonaro went to visit Putin in the middle of the conflict claiming that he was doing so to achieve better conditions in the acquisition of fertilizers and food in the midst of the food crisis.
That trip was not criticized by Lula da Silva, who went so far as to blame equally both Putin and the Ukrainian president, Volodimir Zelenski, for a war that Europe and the United States, he said, have encouraged by cheering Kiev’s aspirations to join NATO and the EU, knowing that this would make things worse.
«Putin should not have invaded Ukraine. But it is not only Putin who is to blame. The U.S. and the EU are also to blame. What was the motive for the invasion of Ukraine – NATO? Then the U.S. and Europe should have said, ‘Ukraine will not join NATO.’ That would have solved the problem,» he said.
In that interview for TIME magazine, Lula da Silva regretted that nobody seemed to be really looking for peace and that they did not take seriously a United Nations that «no longer represents anything because everyone makes decisions without respecting it».
Source: (EUROPA PRESS)
