(Opinion) Since taking office on January 1, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and his Foreign Minister Mauro Vieira have publicly advocated for a negotiated end to the Russian war in Ukraine.
Brazil has taken a middle course in the conflict, frustrating some Western leaders.
While Brasília has condemned the Russian invasion at the United Nations, it has skirted US-imposed sanctions against Moscow and rejected a US request to supply weapons to Ukraine.
Instead, Brazil says it wants to be part of a group of nations working for peace.
Rhetoric is one thing.
Last week, Brazil went further when Lula’s top foreign policy adviser, Celso Amorim, flew to Moscow and met with Russian President Vladimir Putin to persuade him to hold peace talks.
The two men sat on opposite sides at Putin’s notoriously long oval table for foreign dignitaries.
Amorim spoke to CNN Brasil after the talks but offered only one cryptic statement:
“To say that the doors to [negotiations] are open would be an exaggeration,” he said.
“But to say they are completely closed is also not true.”
Amorim’s trip also took him to Paris, where he met with policymakers ahead of French President Emmanuel Macron’s trip to China.
Unlike most EU leaders, Macron has continued to speak with Putin during the war, and in Beijing, he urged Chinese President Xi Jinping to push for peace talks.
Amorim acknowledged to CNN Brasil that both warring parties would rather keep fighting than reach a cease-fire now, especially as Ukraine gears up for a spring offensive against Russia.
“Lula is playing with his political capital,” former Chilean diplomat and Boston University professor Jorge Heine told Foreign Policy.
“If this doesn’t work, he will lose some of it.”
Lula’s administration has many other diplomatic challenges to tackle, from restoring credibility to climate change initiatives to diversifying trade with China and dealing with Venezuela’s crisis.
Rubens Barbosa, a former Brazilian diplomat and president of the São Paulo-based Institute of International Relations and Foreign Trade, told Foreign Policy that he views the possibility of peace talks with “skepticism” at the moment.
He said there is currently “no room for negotiation” between Russia and Ukraine.
The visit was “an important political gesture,” but “it has no practical effect.”
Still, Barbosa added, Amorim’s trip showed one thing:
“Russia values its relations with Brazil.”
“It was not foreseen that Celso [Amorim] could get a meeting with Putin.”
“Celso is an advisor, and Putin is the president of a nuclear power.”
The two countries have been working together for years as part of the BRICS group, including India, China, and South Africa.
Lula has spoken positively about the BRICS, as he seeks good relations with Europe and the United States.
If Brazil remains non-aligned in the conflict, it can act as a credible interlocutor in the war, Barbosa said.
For his part, Lula spoke by phone with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky last month to discuss efforts to bring peace to the country.
On Thursday, Lula told reporters in Brasília that “Putin cannot keep Ukrainian territory,” which he has invaded since early 2022.
Eventual negotiations could be a long way off, but Heine said if Brazil and other countries can get the message across that the global South wants peace – it doesn’t want permanent war in Ukraine – that could move things forward.
Developing countries have shied away from sending arms to Russia or Ukraine for various reasons, including the bloody consequences of great-power conflicts during the Cold War.
Brazil is betting that its continued public and private calls for peace could persuade other countries – both those considered non-aligned and those closer to one party, such as France and China – to work toward an end to the conflict.
Lula will visit China later this month and press Xi to negotiate personally.
Brazil has tried and failed at ambitious global negotiations before.
In 2010, when Lula was president, Brazil and Turkey jointly brokered an agreement to ease international concerns about Iran’s nuclear program by shipping enriched Iranian uranium to Turkey rather than ending the program entirely.
It appeared to be a breakthrough.
“For the first time in years, Iran appears to be cooperating,” Gonul Tol of the Middle East Institute wrote at the time.
Trita Parsi of the Iranian American Council noted in Foreign Policy that this might be because “[w]hile Iran has been suspicious of European and US maneuvers and proposals, that suspicion is unlikely to arise in a deal backed by Brazil.”
Nevertheless, the Obama administration rejected the agreement, which sought to curb Iran’s nuclear program through sanctions.
Thirteen years later, that approach has little to show for it.
Just as the United States torpedoed Brazil’s negotiating efforts in Iran, it could do the same in Ukraine.
Washington is the biggest beneficiary of the Ukrainian conflict and has so far resisted efforts to negotiate an end.
But Brasília still has a voice and seems determined to use it.