Kyiv counts on Portugal and Brazil for peace plan

Ukraine is counting on Portugal and Brazil for the Ukraine peace plan because “all countries are suffering” from Russia’s war in Ukraine, a Ukrainian Presidency official has said.

In an interview with Lusa, the deputy head of the Ukrainian presidency’s office, Ihor Zhovkva, recalled that last summer, Portuguese President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa promised to “promote good contacts” between his Brazilian counterpart Lula da Silva and his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

According to the head of the foreign policy department of the Ukrainian presidency, Zelenskyy and Lula had “a very positive and fruitful meeting” in New York during the last UN General Assembly, claiming that Ukraine needs Brazil, a member of the BRICS group (with Russia, India, China and South Africa), and other countries from the so-called global south, for the peace summit planned for the near future.

“My president has reached an agreement with Switzerland to hold the first World Peace Summit, and we can certainly count on the participation of Portugal,” he said.

“The countries of the global south, including Brazil, whose president has called for an end to the hostilities in Ukraine and the start of a negotiation process, which both sides have so far rejected,” Zhovkva added.

Zhovkva alluded to Portugal’s “historically good relations” with Brazil and other countries in the Latin American region to “convince their leaders that this is the only peace formula that can bring peace to the territory of Ukraine”. “It is not possible to use formulas from other countries,” he stressed.

“That’s why my president when he spoke to the leaders of the South, convinced them that this is a peace formula that is applicable and that can be instrumental during this first peace summit,” he said, hoping that after the discussions, it will be possible to reach an action plan and implement this formula.

According to the head of the Ukrainian presidency, together, these countries “can exert collective pressure on Russia”, stressing that the Kremlin is “afraid of force and afraid of a unified voice”, and that’s what it received “in response to its open aggression against Ukraine in 2022”, unlike what happened eight years earlier after the annexation of Crimea and the occupation of part of Donbas.

“So now countries must unite to put an end to this war,” urged the Ukrainian official, adding that the reasons were evident to Ukraine “because its people are dying”, but they should also be obvious to the rest of the world.

Zhovkva said that when Zelenskyy was in Jeddah last year for talks on his peace plan, several leaders from the Arab world told him that “they too are suffering because of Russian aggression against Ukraine”. The same was true of his meetings with Argentine President Javier Milei and other Latin American and African leaders.

All countries are suffering in different ways from the invasion of Ukraine, whether in terms of supply chains, price rises or the availability of energy resources, he said, noting that it is for this reason that “the whole international community must unite and say enough is enough” to Moscow.

(Henrique Botequilha – edited by Pedro Sousa Carvalho | Lusa.pt)