The shocking photo of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Volodymyr Zelenski meeting after the UN General Assembly this month in New York may be a good document of how Brazil's proposal for a negotiated solution in Ukraine may be gaining traction.
In the image, distributed by the Brazilian Government, a 21-year-old Lula speaks animatedly in front of a poker-faced Zelenski dressed in uniform. Next to the Brazilian Foreign Minister, Mauro Vieira, is Lula's closest advisor, former Chancellor Celso Amorim, true architect of the veteran president's ambitious foreign agenda.
Amorim met with Vladimir Putin in Moscow in March, breaking protocol and angering Washington. Now, Lula, who has met with Zelenski, whom he criticized last year for "putting on a show" instead of negotiating, has planted the other leg of the non-aligned Brazilian diplomacy.
For Lula, the meeting reinforces the message that he is a sincere mediator. "Brazil is the country best positioned as a mediator to end the war precisely because it has refused to take sides," according to Thiago Rodrigues, foreign policy specialist at the Fluminense Federal University in Rio de Janeiro.
With the paralysis of the war and the so-called “Ukraine fatigue” growing in the public opinion of the US and Europe, the time for the Brazilian option may be closer.
According to data compiled this week by the New York Times and the Institute for the Study of War, in recent months Ukraine's so-called counteroffensive has made "insignificant progress" at "extreme costs." This raises the risk of "a decrease in Western support". Russia has also failed to achieve its goals.
Lula urged Zelenski during the meeting in New York to "bring the claim of territorial integrity to the negotiation table and not to the battlefield", according to sources from the Brazilian journalist and writer Jamil Chade.
The president may be more receptive to the Brazilian proposal than his gesture in the photo indicates: "It was a useful meeting for Zelenski, because he has signaled that he may be willing to accede to a negotiated exit," said Rodrigues.
Since his first governments (2003-2011), Lula has not hidden his ambition to promote a new multipolar world order.
After years of isolationism under the presidency of Jair Bolsonaro, Lula, who will be 78 years old in October, has launched himself on the global circuit. He has made 13 trips abroad since the beginning of the year – the first, to Argentina, the last to Vietnam – despite a hip worn out by osteoarthritis that will be operated on at the hospital at the weekend.
It may be a case of overexposure for a Latin American country that, despite its 213 million inhabitants, has little geopolitical weight if measured by weapons of war or GDP. “Brazil does not have enough economic scale to lead the transformation to global governance; the natural leader of the Global South is China", writes Zeina Latif, a columnist for the powerful Globo media group. Latif also criticizes Lula's "anti-American ideology" and the desire to "defend his biography".
But Brazil – historically known as the country without enemies, at least until Bolsonaro – has always been a powerhouse of soft power. Up to 60 countries requested to meet with Lula during the assembly in New York.
Brazil once again has a strong role in multilateral organizations. It will host the G-20 – which brings together the most important developed countries with a group of developing countries – next year at a summit in Rio de Janeiro. He is the leader of the G-77, which groups the countries of the Global South.
As one of the founding countries, Brazil obtained the presidency of the Brics development bank – occupied by former president Dilma Rousseff – before the incorporation of countries such as Saudi Arabia, Iran and Argentina.
"Lula is the only figure in the world who can articulate between the rich countries of the G-7 and the developing countries of the G-77," said Rodrigues in an interview.
This is key to their role in the search for a just peace in Ukraine. Lula "expresses without fear what is believed in other countries of the Global South, which reject the idea that it is a war of good guys against bad guys," says a former director of Unasur.
Of course, it is not just an ethical foreign policy... Brazil has an interest in maintaining good relations with Russia and even more so with China. Russia is the main supplier of potassium for the fertilizers needed by Brazil's powerful agro-industry. China, on the other hand, imports 54% of the basic foods – soybeans, corn, sugar and cotton – produced in Brazil. Despite Western sanctions, trade between Brazil and Russia has soared in the past year. Brazil imports 30% of its diesel from Russia, up from 0.7% in 2022.
Despite all this, Lula maintains good relations with Washington, as was seen in the meeting with Biden after the UN assembly. "I don't know if the US is ready to adopt the Brazilian position, but it suits them that people like Lula and Amorim can talk to both sides," says Chade.
Even the big Brazilian media have learned to love Lula. "There is a lot of pragmatism in Lula's politics, and that's why I think the Brazilian elites agree," said Rodrigues.
