Brazil’s Lula refused to sell Germany weapons ‘to kill Russians’
Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva rejected an approach by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz to purchase arms for Ukraine. The Brazilian head of stage stressed he wouldn’t sell weapons “to kill Russians” or anyone else.
Speaking to reporters on Wednesday at a joint media conference with the Portuguese Prime Minister Luís Montenegro, Lula reiterated Brazil's neutral stance in the ongoing conflict between Kiev and Moscow.
Germany, in contrast, has been among Ukraine’s key backers, having supplied it with billions worth of military aid. Da Silva recalled that in January 2023, Scholz visited Brazil as part of a tour to drum up support for Kiev in South America and requested cannons for the war.
”I told my friend Olaf Scholz: ‘I will not sell weapons to kill a Russian, to kill anyone. So, I want to apologize, but Brazil will not sell the weapons you need because I want peace, and if I want peace, I cannot fuel the war. We want peace between Russia and Ukraine. Now, this is only possible if both are at the negotiating table’,” he said.
Lula has long advocated for talks to resolve the conflict and insisted that supplying arms would only escalate the situation, hindering prospects for peace.
Last May Brasilia and Beijing jointly issued a six-point plan for settling the Ukraine conflict, emphasizing “dialogue and negotiation” as the only “viable way out of the crisis.”
Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky dismissed the proposal as “just a political statement,” accusing them of colluding with Russia.
Lula hit back, saying that Ukraine should heed Brazil’s advice about seeking peace in the conflict. “Those who want to talk to us now could have talked to us before the war had started,” he said.
On Thursday, Russia’s top diplomat Sergey Lavrov and his Brazilian counterpart Mauro Vieira discussed the need to address the root causes of the Ukraine conflict and this week’s Russian-US talks in Riyadh, the foreign ministry in Moscow said. Speaking on the sidelines of G20 foreign ministers’ meeting in Johannesburg, South Africa, they also discussed upcoming high-level meetings and plans for collaboration between Moscow and Brasília, especially within BRICS, the ministry statement added.
Last month, Lula accepted Moscow’s invitation to attend the 80th anniversary celebrations of Victory in World War II in the Russian capital on May 9.
