RIO DE JANEIRO – Ignoring United States concerns, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro is due to arrive in Russia on Tuesday for an official visit with highly awkward diplomatic timing, amid the tense standoff between Moscow and the West over Ukraine.
Brushing off pressure from traditional ally the US and within his own cabinet, Bolsonaro decided to go ahead with meeting Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, a visit he says is about building trade relations.
The far-right leader known as the “Tropical Trump” has dismissed fears that Putin could try to use the trip to claim support on Ukraine from Latin America’s biggest country, a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council.
But their meeting, scheduled for Wednesday, could become a diplomatic minefield for Bolsonaro if the subject veers away from bilateral ties.
“The timing is terrible,” said Guilherme Casaroes, a political analyst at the Getulio Vargas Foundation in Brazil.
“We don't know what’s going to happen. Things are going to be more and more intense at the (Russia-Ukraine) border,” he said.
Russia made the invitation in late November, when tension over Ukraine was already building.
Bolsonaro accepted, deciding to combine it with a visit to fellow far-right leader Viktor Orban in Hungary, where he will travel Thursday.
Since then, the Ukraine standoff has only grown worse, with the risk of war in Europe looking all too real.
“The US exerted a lot of pressure on Brasilia to call off” the trip, said Felipe Loureiro, professor of international relations at the University of Sao Paulo.
But cancelling now would send the signal that “Brazil is a puppet of the US”, and Putin “would get really pissed off”, he said.
Bolsonaro insisted again in a radio interview yesterday that he would go ahead with the visit, despite the prospect of war breaking out soon.
“We ask God that peace reign in the world, for the good of all of us,” Bolsonaro said. – AFP, February 13, 2022
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