Brazil’s Lula slams UN over war in Ukraine

Brasilia, Aug 2 (EFE).- The war in Ukraine proves that the world needs a new system of global governance, Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said Wednesday.

In his first press conference with foreign journalists since he took office on January 1, Lula said the United Nations had failed to assume its “responsibility” because permanent members of the Security Council “are the ones who foment wars.”

Lula repeated his stance that the war, which began after Russia invaded its neighbor in February 2022, could only be ended through negotiations.

Brazil’s president has refused to follow Western nations in explicitly condemning or sanctioning Moscow, and Lula again highlighted that “the first thing” his country was doing is “not participating in this war.”

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine should have been “discussed at the United Nations”, Lula said, but “it is the members of the Security Council who make war” and those who “believe that the war will end only when one of the parties imposes itself” on the other by military means.

Lula admitted that a “peace proposal can only be discussed when the two countries (in conflict) want it”, but he insisted that world leaders should work to generate that situation, instead of “feeding” the war.

The Brazilian president also condemned the UN’s “inaction” in the face of the war in Ukraine and the growing tension in Israel and the Middle East.

According to Lula, world leaders have an “obligation” to try “to stop all wars”, which have devastating economic effects and a very high human cost, while worsening the “immense” and “outrageous” inequalities that exist on the planet.

“Today almost all (countries) are investing in weapons” that accentuate conflicts and “we do not know how much they are investing to end hunger and misery in the world,” he said. EFE

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