The headline in German and Russian newspapers such as Süddeutsche Zeitung and Kommersant is Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s meeting with President Vladimir Putin. The first described the withdrawal of Russian troops as a “good sign”. The second demanded that Germany convince Ukraine to comply with the Minsk agreements, avoiding the independence of the Russian-majority regions.
Americans such as the Associated Press and The New York Times also pay some attention to Jair Bolsonaro’s trip to Moscow, another sign that “Russia is courting Latin America”, again in a “dispute” with the US over the region. .
The AP hears from Lula’s former chancellor Celso Amorim: “I don’t want to defend Bolsonaro’s foreign policy, which is regrettable. But receiving an invitation from an important partner and canceling would give a bad reading.” And the NYT hears from Bolsonaro’s former chancellor Ernesto Araújo: “I think [a viagem] is wrong in many ways. Under other circumstances, fine. But with the crisis looming, it’s not.”
In Russia, the Brazilian’s trip entered the jokes around the day set by the US for the alleged invasion of Ukraine. In Elena Chernenkojournalist for Kommersant, tweeting in Russian and English: “Now we know Putin’s plan for February 16: he will meet with Brazilian Jair Bolsonaro in the Kremlin.”
The date of the invasion is mocked by Russia’s top TV comedian, Ivan Urgant. And according to the newspaper Komsomolskaia Pravda, “Putin is good-natured when talking about the reports that advance until the day”. He would have asked: “Has the exact time of the start of the war been published somewhere?”
Bloomberg warns that “the Kremlin may enjoy showing that [os EUA] are the joke, proving these war warnings to be false”.
‘WOLFSANGEL’
of the networks NBC/MSNBC (above) and ABC on the front page of The Times and Telegraph newspapers, with images from the Associated Press, the media in the US and UK paid wide attention to the “photo-op” organized by the markedly neo-Nazi Azov battalion, with an emphasis on a “Ukrainian great-grandmother” posing with an AK-47. She is guided by soldiers with one of the SS and Nazi party symbols on their arm.
