President Jair Bolsonaro (PL) acknowledged this Friday (18) that he was criticized for his trip to Russia and said that the mission “was not to take sides with anyone”. The chief executive’s trip came amid escalating tensions between Russia and Ukraine. He was with Vladimir Putin last Wednesday (16).
“I even said that the world is our home and that God is above all. I spoke a message of peace. It was not to take sides with anyone,” said the president, during his weekly broadcast on social networks.
“Some took to one side, ‘I shouldn’t do this, I shouldn’t do that’. There was a lot of criticism.” He repeated what he had already said this week, that an eventual war is in nobody’s interest.
The president did not directly quote the United States’ negative reaction to his speech that he is “in solidarity with Russia” — without specifying in what aspect he was manifesting himself.
This Friday afternoon, White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki criticized this speech by Bolsonaro. “I would say that the vast majority of the global community is united in their view that another country taking part of their land, terrorizing their people, is certainly something not in line with global values. And so, I think Brazil may be on the other side.” where the majority of the global community is,” he said.
The spokeswoman stressed that she had not discussed the issue with US President Joe Biden, but her statements add to criticisms made on Thursday (17) by the State Department. “The moment when the president of Brazil expressed solidarity with Russia, just when Russian forces are preparing to launch attacks on Ukrainian cities, could not be worse,” a spokesman for the ministry said in a note sent to journalists.
“This undermines international diplomacy aimed at averting a strategic and humanitarian disaster, as well as Brazil’s own calls for a peaceful solution to the crisis.”
In Brasilia, Brazilian diplomats admit that the term “solidarity” used by Bolsonaro was bad, but they saw an exaggeration in the American response. Privately, they say that the president chose his words poorly, in an impromptu speech that should not be taken literally.
An interlocutor at the Itamaraty stated that the expression does not correspond to the facts. It is well known in the international community that the country is aligned with the United Nations Security Council and has a stance of not taking sides in conflicts like this.
In this Friday’s broadcast, Bolsonaro also quoted a Folha report that reported the beginning of his programming in Moscow, at the ceremony of laying a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.
The president also reaffirmed the version that he did not address the conflict with Putin. “They fought on our side against Nazism. Oh, my God in heaven,” he said, asking for a “little study.”
Although it is a protocol for every head of state, the tomb is one of the symbolic high points of the celebration of the victory of the Soviet Union, a communist empire that lasted from 1922 to 1991 and is at the center of the fetishes of Bolsonarism, in World War II (1939-1991). 45, but which started for the Soviets in 1941 and which is called in the country the Great Patriotic War).
