Brazil’s lack of positioning in relation to the war in Ukraine is an obstacle to welcoming refugees fleeing the conflict with Russia, says Fabiana Tronenko, a former Ukrainian ambassador to Brazil.
She is geographically far from the conflict, but her husband, Rostislav Tronenko, remains in Ukraine. The country enters the fourth week of war with Russia and accumulates humanitarian, social and economic consequences that were the subject of debate promoted by the sheet this Thursday (17).
According to Tronenko, the alleged neutrality of the Jair Bolsonaro (PL) government ends up resulting in difficulties in adopting measures that could mitigate the impacts suffered by Ukrainians seeking refuge in Brazil. Welcoming actions, therefore, are mainly dependent on actions by the private sector, third sector entities and churches in partnership with the Ukrainian community present in cities such as Prudentópolis, in Paraná.
For Duval Fernandes, professor of the graduate program in geography at PUC Minas, the Brazilian State must go beyond granting humanitarian visas to Ukrainians and organize policies that, in addition to offering housing for refugees, think about integration into the society, with actions such as language teaching and job opportunities.
According to the most recent United Nations (UN) estimate, the war in Ukraine has already caused 3.1 million refugees to leave the country. The migration crisis triggered by the conflict is among the most accelerated in recent European history, and this almost unprecedented flow increases the responsibility of the countries that receive them.
Attacks on Ukrainian cities are still ongoing, but negotiators and diplomats in Kiev and Moscow have shown signs of moving towards an agreement, although it is still premature to think of the conflict as an event with an end in sight.
And even if the war is stopped in the coming days, there are a number of issues to be resolved before Ukrainian citizens return to anything like normalcy. For Fernandes, it will still be necessary, for example, to rebuild the basic infrastructure of cities bombed by Russia.
Furthermore, the return of people who left the country fleeing the conflict, the majority of whom are women and children, will depend on the political scenario created with the end of the war. Faced with the possibility of installing a pro-Russian government, the refugees would fear retaliation and would remain in the places where they were welcomed, evaluates the professor.
Another obstacle that should persist even when Russia and Ukraine reach a peace agreement is the impact of economic sanctions, whose objective is to destabilize the government of Vladimir Putin, evaluates Simão Davi Silber, professor of international economics at the University of São Paulo (USP). .
He exemplifies the effect of the measures applied against Russia with the closure of McDonald’s, one of more than 70 global companies that suspended their activities in Russian territory – which represents the loss of more than 66 thousand jobs in the country.
The estimate, according to the professor, is that Russia’s GDP will fall from 5% to 10% in 2022. The impact will be felt mainly by the country’s citizens, who are becoming poorer with the devaluation of the ruble and the uncertainties caused by the conflict.
The economic consequences, for example, also reverberate in Brazil, says Silber. They are present in the rise in inflation, in the decrease in purchasing power and in the increase in the price of commodities, important for the production of foods such as French bread and for animal feed in the agricultural sector – the main one is oil, which affects the gasoline price.
The specialist also exemplifies the impact of the conflict for Brazilians with the increase in the basic interest rate to 11.75%, the highest level since 2017, announced this Wednesday by Copom. In a scenario of rising interest rates and inflation, projections are for unemployment and global economic recession, he says.
The event promoted by sheet mediated by Daigo Oliva, editor of Mundo. The Russian ambassador to Brazil, Alexei Labetski, was invited to participate in the debate and had confirmed his presence, but canceled his participation the day before.
