President Jair Bolsonaro (PL) commented on Monday (12) the War in Ukraine and adopted arguments similar to those used by Russian leaders to justify the invasion of the neighboring country.
“What must have been going through his head? [do Putin]? ‘The guys are joining NATO, they’re going to deploy the missile a few minutes from Moscow.’ Equal to [situação na] bay of pigs [em referência à crise dos mÃsseis] in 1962. The Soviet Union put [mÃsseis balÃsticos] there [em Cuba] and the American government said ‘take it out or the bug will get it’. The guys took it,” he said in an interview with six sympathetic podcasters.
The crisis mentioned by Bolsonaro began when the then Cuban leader, Fidel Castro, convinced the Soviet Union to install ballistic missiles on the island, on the grounds that they would serve as instruments of military deterrence. At the time, Washington also had missiles of the type in Turkey, close to Russia.
The Pentagon considered responding to Cuban threats by invading the island, but then US President John Fitzgerald Kennedy opted for a diplomatic way out. The year before, a US-backed operation against the Castro regime had failed.
After American planes identified the installation of the Soviet missiles, Washington and Moscow threatened each other and the stalemate – which lasted 14 days – left the world on the brink of nuclear war. The agreement to withdraw the missiles from Cuba was only reached when the US publicly promised not to invade the island. Secretly, the US also agreed to withdraw its missiles from Turkey.
Since the beginning of the Ukrainian War, Bolsonaro has claimed Brazil’s neutrality in the conflict. When visiting Moscow in February, the Brazilian president expressed his solidarity with Russia, which generated unease with the White House – at the time, the US already accused the Kremlin of planning the invasion of the neighboring country.
After the meeting with Putin, Bolsonaro even hinted that his departure would have helped to end the confrontation, which, obviously, was not confirmed. Bolsonaro, however, claims that the trip guaranteed the supply of fertilizers for Brazilian agribusiness. In this Monday’s interview, the Brazilian president declined to reveal the content of the conversation with his Russian counterpart.
Bolsonaro also commented on the phone call he had with the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensk, in July. “[Ele] he called me, I’m not going to say everything he said, of course, but at one point he said ‘what can you do to end the war’. If I had the power to end it now, I would have had a lot more power not to have started back there,” he said.
In an interview with Jornal Nacional, the Ukrainian president criticized Brazil’s neutrality in the war. “I don’t believe that anyone can remain neutral when there is a war in the world,” he said.
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