Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksi Reznikov announced Friday his intention to ask the Brazilian government for ammunition for the ‘Gepard’ anti-aircraft tanks, with which they claim to protect the facilities where they store grain and cereals from Russian attacks.
Reznikov thus responded to a Brazilian journalist at a press conference, Ukrinform agency reported. «I will send a signal to your government because you have a chance to provide us with ammunition for ‘Gepard’,» he said.
«They are not only in Switzerland, they are also in Brazil, so if they transmit such a request to me, I am ready to formalize it,» Reznikov stressed.
The Ukrainian minister explained that they need ammunition for this German anti-aircraft artillery system «for humanitarian missions», as they serve to «close» the skies to Iranian drones so that they do not destroy the logistics of supplying grain warehouses.
«From these centers, grain, sunflower oil and corn are supplied to starving countries. Therefore, if you give us these munitions we will protect the skies from terrorist drones» and «this will be a humanitarian mission on your part because we will save lives and people will not starve in Africa and Asia,» he has argued.
Since the beginning of the war, the Brazilian government of the outgoing Jair Bolsonaro has declared itself neutral, although the far-right leader met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow in a highly controversial visit at the height of hostilities in Ukraine.
While awaiting the official position of the new government, the newly elected president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, questioned the «spectacle» in which, in his opinion, the Ukrainian president, Volodimir Zelenski, was participating and reproached him for having exchanged the negotiating table for the European parliaments.
«They could have sat at a negotiating table for ten, fifteen, twenty days, a whole month, trying to find a solution. I believe that dialogue only works when it is taken seriously,» said Lula, who also blamed the United States and the EU for encouraging a war in which «not only Putin is guilty.»
