The President of the Association of Ukrainians in Portugal said today that no protest demonstration against the President of Brazil was ever planned, expressing surprise at the contrary statements made by a member of the Brazilian government.
In statements to the Portugal Pulse agency, Pavlo Sadokha said he did not know the reasons for the statement made by the Brazilian Minister of State, Márcio Macedo, after receiving on Friday at the Brazilian Embassy in Lisbon an open letter protesting against the controversial statements of President Lula da Silva on the conflict triggered by the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022.
In the open letter, the Ukrainian community recalls that Lula da Silva stated that the peaceful solution to end the war is for Ukraine to give up its territories, considering that the blame must be shared between the two sides.
The words of the Brazilian president, spoken in the presence of the head of Russian diplomacy, Sergei Lavrov, were immediately criticized by the West, especially by the European Union and the United States, which forced Lula da Silva to “change his hand” to emphasize that he condemned the Russian invasion of Ukraine and defended peace.
“At the same time that my government condemns the violation of Ukraine’s territorial integrity, we are in favor of a negotiated political solution. I spoke of our concern about the consequences of the war, which go beyond the European continent,” Lula da Silva said afterwards.
“We are not talking about demonstrations, because demonstrations were never planned, neither for today nor for Tuesday [April 25]. The only action we had planned was to deliver an open letter to the embassy,” the association’s president told Portugal Pulse today.
For Sadokha, the Ukrainian delegation that went in and talked to Macedo left the embassy with the same idea they had about Lula da Silva’s words, pointing out that the only positive point was the Brazilian president’s decision to send the former head of diplomacy to Ukraine to assess the situation.
“We clarified everything and we were told that Lula da Silva will continue to seek a dialogue for peace. I don’t know how. When Nazi Germany invaded Europe [in World War II, 1939-45], no one looked to [Adolf] Hitler to promote peace. The same is true of [Russian President Vladimir] Putin, who is not a politician to dialogue with, because he is a criminal who must be judged,” he stressed.
On Friday, after receiving the Ukrainian delegation that presented him with the open letter, Macedo told journalists that Lula da Silva had decided that his international affairs advisor, Celso Amorim, would visit Ukraine, still without a date, which would have led the Ukrainians to cancel the protests scheduled for Tuesday.
The open letter requests “the intervention of Lula da Silva in this conflict of Russia against Ukraine and invites President Lula to go to Ukraine,” Macedo explained.
“President Lula’s vocation is for peace. So I said I received them with great honor,” Macedo said, adding that the head of state “will work to unite other countries to seek an alternative to end this conflict, which is not good for humanity and has lasted too long.
As for all the polemics and criticism that have targeted the Brazilian president for his statements on the conflict, the Secretary of State believes that “there has been an interpretation that does not correspond to the position of President Lula.
“There was no hostility in the dialogue [with the Ukrainians], on the contrary, it was a very good meeting”.
“The President asked me, on his behalf, to express solidarity with all the families who have been victims of this war and to say that, just as he has the obsession to end hunger in Brazil, he also has the determination to help put an end to this conflict.”
