Economy Minister Paulo Guedes said this Tuesday (19) that President Jair Bolsonaro’s (PL) visit to Russia in February, days before Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine, took place at an inappropriate time.
“The president was visiting Putin, and the timing was not appropriate,” acknowledged the minister during an interview promoted by the Center for International and Strategic Studies (CSIS), in Washington.
Bolsonaro was in Russia between the 15th and 16th of February. During the visit, the Brazilian president even expressed “solidarity” with Russia, which had negative repercussions in the international community in the face of the escalation of tension that was already announced.
Bolsonaro also drew a non-existent inference between his visit to Moscow and the announcement of the withdrawal of part of the Russian troops that were exercising around Ukraine, even before the invasion.
“Some countries thought that we should not come. We kept to our agenda, coincidentally or not, part of the troops left the border”, said the president, on February 16. “My reading of President Putin is that he is also a person who seeks peace.”
On February 24, Russia invaded Ukrainian territory, sparking a conflict that continues to this day.
In this Tuesday’s interview, Guedes stressed that Brazil is against the war and that he has already voted condemning Russia for the conflict on three different occasions within the UN (United Nations), the Security Council and the General Assembly.
The minister did not, however, mention that the country abstained in a vote that suspended Russia from the UN Human Rights Council for reports of “gross and systematic violations and abuses of human rights” in Ukraine.
Bolsonaro and Itamaraty have avoided direct criticism of Putin. “The president is thinking about the fertilizers that come from Russia,” said Guedes.
According to the Minister of Economy, the Brazilian Constitution prevents the country from adhering to the economic sanctions imposed by the world on Russia, except in the case of measures adopted within the framework of the UN.
He also stated that Brazil should not support a request by US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen to exclude Russia from multilateral organizations such as the IMF (International Monetary Fund) and the World Bank.
“Will we vote to expel them from the World Bank? Not to expel them, but they should be part of [da instituição] if they remain at war?” said Guedes, who is in Washington to attend meetings of the two bodies.
“The question we should ask them [russos] it’s ‘if you don’t respect institutions, if you don’t behave properly, why do we condemn war and invasion… why should you stay?
“We can’t remove it, but why [a Rússia] should you stay if you don’t behave properly?”
In recent days, the US has sought to raise the level of economic sanctions on Russia in an attempt to end the conflict. In this context, Yellen wants to garner support to limit the Russian country’s rights or even expel it from these bodies.
According to information from Reuters, Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov wrote to Guedes, asking for “Brazil’s support to avoid political accusations and attempts at discrimination in international financial institutions and multilateral forums”.
“Behind the scenes, there is work going on at the IMF and the World Bank to limit or even expel Russia from the decision-making process,” wrote Siluanov.
Without mentioning the letter from his Russian colleague, Guedes said that the IMF’s own rules prevent the expulsion of a member country and that, even if that were possible, the measure would end up “destroying bridges”.
“We support IMF rules, which say that we cannot expel them. The only reason why we should preserve the bridge is to convince them to cease fire. If we expel them, we are encouraging economic warfare,” said the minister.
