The front against Russia is powerful. But its strength seems increasingly relative in this multipolar world where trade and energy dependencies mark the decisions of most countries. In supporting Kyiv against the Russian invasion, Washington basically counts on the rest of the G-7, NATO and the EU; that is, with the major Western powers and Japan. But she has China against her, she lacks India and now it is clear that she does not have Brazil either.
Two months after the reception at the White House where Joe Biden and his counterpart Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva reactivated bilateral friendship after the era of estrangement with Jair Bolsonaro, the US government scolded the Brazilian president on Monday for “repeating like a parrot the Russian and Chinese propaganda without regard to the facts†regarding the war in Ukraine.
The harsh criticism, expressed by the normally moderate Homeland Security spokesman, John Kirby, stemmed from the visit to Beijing in which the Brazilian had accused Washington of “fostering the war” and suggested handing over Crimea to Russia to open the way to peace.
While Kirby considered such a proposal “simply wrong, especially for a country like Brazil that has voted in favor of the principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity” at the United Nations, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov applauded the initiative during a friendly visit. to BrasÃlia. “Russia is grateful to our Brazilian friends for their clear understanding of the genesis of the situation in Ukraine,” Lavrov said.
One day after Washington’s anger at the Brazilian leader, the government of VolodÃmir Zelenski yesterday invited Lula to visit Ukraine so that he “understands the real reasons and the essence of Russian aggression and its consequences for world security.” This was stated by the country’s Foreign Affairs spokesman, Oleh Nikolenko. And he added: “Ukraine notes with interest the efforts of the President of Brazil to find a solution to end the war, but putting the victim and the aggressor on the same scale does not correspond to the real situation.” Meanwhile, the G-7 foreign ministers, meeting in Japan, threatened to impose “serious costs” on countries that support Russia. “Message to Brazil?” asked the Brazilian newspaper O Globo.
Influenced or not by the warnings from Washington and its allies, Lula assured yesterday that his government condemns the violation of the territorial integrity of Ukraine, according to Reuters. But he insisted on his proposal to form a group of nations to help negotiate a peace agreement, which – according to his previous statements – would precisely imply territorial cessions by the invaded country.
Brazil is heavily dependent on Russia and China. The former supplies around a quarter of the fertilizers needed by its powerful agricultural sector, which represents 26% of its GDP and 48% of its exports. During his visit to Brazil, Lavrov talked about it with his counterpart, Mauro Vieira. They talked about “guaranteeing the flow of this vital input for our agriculture” despite international sanctions that hinder trade with Russia, Vieira said. And, referring to meat exports from Brazil, he added: “We also express our expectation of increasing the number of Brazilian establishments authorized to export products of animal origin to Russia.”
China, for its part, is Brazil’s first trading partner. Bilateral trade reached its record last year: 150,500 million dollars, with Brazilian exports for 89,700 million. Before Lula’s visit to Beijing, the two countries agreed that exchanges could be carried out without going through the dollar, that is, converting reals to yuan and vice versa.
For similar commercial reasons, although with very different nuances of greater or lesser political proximity, a good part of Latin America, Africa and India distance themselves from supporting the bloc led by the US against Moscow. The Indian case is the clearest. While the West moved between the veto and the restrictions on imports of Russian oil, what is already the most populous country on earth multiplied its hydrocarbon purchases from that country by more than ten times last year. And bilateral trade as a whole increased by more than 150%.
Geopolitics has always been, to a large extent, a matter of numbers.
