Ukraine Crisis: The One Issue on Which Brazil’s Top Tier Presidential Candidates Agree

Brazilians are heading to the polls Sunday for general elections to elect the president, vice president, the National Congress, state governors and legislative assemblies. The president and vice president are elected on a 50% + 1 vote basis, meaning a second round will occur on October 30 if no candidate gets more than half the votes.

On most issues, incumbent Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro of the conservative populist nationalist Liberal Party and his rival Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of the democratic socialist, left-wing populist Workers Party are polar opposites. From economic development, inflation and unemployment to the environment, healthcare and the defense of the country’s national interests, the men have proposed radically different visions for Brazil’s future.

But there is one issue the top tier candidates in the Brazilian elections seem to agree on: the need for dialogue to resolve the security crisis in Ukraine.

‘Line of Balance’

“The economic barriers that the United States and Europe imposed against Russia did not work,” President Bolsonaro said in a speech in July. “My line was that of balance, in addition to negotiating fertilizers, food security for the world and sovereignty for our Amazon,” the president added.

In a separate address, Bolsonaro urged Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to be realistic about the ultimate outcome of the conflict with Russia. “I will give my opinion on what I believe – the solution for the issue…How did Argentina’s war with the United Kingdom end in 1982? That’s the way it goes. We regret it, the truth is that these things that hurt, but we must understand it,” he said.

Speaking at the United Nations General Assembly last month, Bolsonaro called for an “immediate ceasefire” in Ukraine, and said the crisis has plunged the planet into a disaster.

“At the United Nations and other forums, we have tried to avoid blocking the channels of dialogue caused by the polarization around the conflict. In this sense, we are against diplomatic and economic isolation,” Bolsonaro said.

The consequences of the crisis have been felt by people around the world through rising prices for food, energy and other goods, he said.

“We support all efforts to reduce the economic impacts of this crisis. But we do not believe that the best path is the adoption of unilateral and targeted sanctions which are contrary to international law. These measures have harmed economic recovery and affected the human rights of vulnerable populations, including in countries in Europe itself,” Bolsonaro said.

“The solution to the conflict in Ukraine will be reached only through negotiation and dialogue,” he stressed.

‘If You Want Peace You Have to Have Patience’

Lula has echoed Bolsonaro’s sentiments on the need for more dialogue to resolve the Ukrainian crisis.

In an oft-cited interview for Time Magazine in May, the presidential candidate blasted the West over its role in sparking the crisis, and criticized Zelensky over his showmanship.

“We politicians reap what we sow. If I sow fraternity, solidarity, harmony, I’ll reap good things. If I sow discord, I’ll reap quarrels. Putin shouldn’t have invaded Ukraine. But it’s not just Putin who is guilty. The US and the EU are also guilty. What was the reason for the invasion? NATO? Then the US and Europe should have said ‘Ukraine won’t join NATO’. That would have solved the problem,” Lula said.

“The conversations [on reaching peace] were very few. If you want peace, you have to have patience. They could have sat at a negotiating table for 10, 15, 20 days, a whole month, trying to find a solution. I think dialogue only works when it is taken seriously,” he added.

Lula suggested that Zelensky was “just as responsible” as his Russian counterpart for the conflict, saying the Ukrainian president could have put off talks about Kiev’s membership in NATO and the European Union, at least temporarily.

“I don’t know the president of Ukraine. But his behavior is a bit weird. It seems like he’s part of the spectacle. He is on television morning, noon and night. He is in the UK parliament, the German parliament, the French parliament, the Italian parliament, as if he were waging a political campaign. He should be at the negotiating table,” the politician stressed.

Lula also said that “stimulating hate against Putin…won’t solve things,” and that Western support for Zelensky has convinced the Ukrainian president that “he is the cherry on your cake.” Lula criticized US president Joe Biden, saying the United States could have used its immense political clout in the world to “avoid” the conflict instead of “inciting” it, including by conceding that Ukraine would not join NATO.

“Let me tell you something: if I were president of Brazil and they said to me ‘Brazil can join NATO’, I’d say no,” he emphasized.

Stalled Talks

Russian officials expressed readiness to resolve the security crisis in Ukraine more than seven years before Moscow kicked off its special military operation this past February. In early 2015, Russia joined Germany and France as a guarantor to the Minsk peace agreements, a package of measures aimed at ending the war in the Donbass and reintegrating the rebelling pro-Russian territories into Ukraine in exchange for broad autonomy. Successive presidential administrations in Kiev stonewalled on Minsk over the subsequent seven years. In late 2021, Russia proposed a pair of draft comprehensive security treaties to the United States and NATO which would have required both Moscow and the Western military bloc to pull back troops, warships, aircraft and missile systems from one another’s borders, and halt NATO’s creeping eastward expansion. Washington and its allies rejected the proposals in January.

After Russia became directly involved in the conflict in February, Russian and Ukrainian negotiators held a series of peace talks in Belarus and Turkey in February and March aimed at halting the fighting. The final round of talks to date took place in Istanbul, with the Russian side pulling back forces from outside Kiev and in the Chernigov regions as a “gesture of good will.” Since then, no negotiations have taken place.

Last month, Western and Ukrainian media revealed that Moscow and Kiev appeared to be on the brink of a peace deal in the spring, and that now ex-British Prime Minister Boris Johnson flew to Kiev to scuttle the potential agreement.

At a ceremony Friday marking the accession of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics and the Kherson and Zaporozhye regions into the Russian Federation following referendums, President Vladimir Putin reiterated Moscow’s readiness for negotiations.

“We call on the Kiev regime to immediately cease fire and all hostilities; to end the war it unleashed back in 2014 and return to the negotiating table. We are ready for this, as we have said more than once,” Putin said.