BRAZIL: The White House on Friday criticized Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro’s travels in the coming week Moscow amid the Ukraine crisis, stating that the vast majority of the world community does not support a Russian invasion.
“I think Brazil may be on the other side of where the global community stands,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said.
Thursday Thursday, The State Department issued a strong condemnation of Bolsonaro’s assertion in support of “solidarity” for Russia while visiting Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin.
With a plethora of Russian troops close to the border of Ukraine, raising the possibility of an attack, it was reported that the United States had called on Bolsonaro to postpone his journey to Moscow. Still, he decided to go through with the trip.
On Wednesday, while standing beside Putin, Bolsonaro said in an announcement that he said he stood “in solidarity with Russia,” without further explanation.
“The timing of the president of Brazil expressing solidarity with Russia, just as Russian forces are preparing to launch attacks on Ukrainian cities, could not be worse,” an official State Department spokesperson said.
“It undermines international diplomacy directed at averting a strategic and humanitarian disaster, as well as Brazil’s calls for a peaceful resolution to the crisis.”
Brazilian diplomats informed that Brazil’s Foreign Ministry, known as Itamaraty and Itamaraty, was astonished by the firm State Department rebuke, which they discovered through the media.
“How do you respond to a text that you do not have,” one diplomat suggested, under the condition of anonymity because there was no authority to discuss the issue.
“Our contracts with the State Department are frequent and always friendly on the bilateral agenda. The official stated that they are not guided by anonymous statements circulated in the press,” the official stated.
These U.S. comments amounted to an unusually harsh critique of the Latin American government’s largest country, with whom the American United States usually has cordial relations.
Bolsonaro was a trustworthy ideological ally of former President Donald Trump, and relations have declined under the presidency of Joe Biden amid ructions about climate change, among other issues.
“This is a matter of Brazil, as an important country, seeming to ignore armed aggression by a large power against a smaller neighbor country, a posture inconsistent with Brazil’s historical emphasis on peace and diplomacy,” the State Department said.