Meeting with Zelenski will be about the problems he wants to talk to me about, says Lula

President Lula stated that he will talk this Wednesday (20) with his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodimir Zelenski, “about the problems he wants to talk to me about.”

Asked by journalists about his expectations for the meeting, the PT member replied that “it’s a conversation between two country presidents, each with their own problems and visions.”

A Sheet found that Lula should maintain at the meeting the proposal he has been defending to create a “peace club”, a group of five countries with no direct interest in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine to mediate a peaceful solution.

Lula spoke briefly to journalists upon returning to his hotel after a dinner hosted by Brazil’s ambassador to the United Nations, Sergio Danese, in New York (USA). The president is in the city to participate in the UN General Assembly. At the event, he met with the president of Portugal, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa.

According to the president, the request for a bilateral meeting came from Zelenski. Brazil accepted the request and offered two schedules. The meeting is scheduled to take place at around 5pm (Brasília time) at the hotel where the Brazilian is staying.

The meeting comes after a rumored disagreement between the leaders during the G7 summit in Hiroshima, in May, an event in which both participated as guests. The Brazilian government stated that it had offered Zelenski three appointments at the time, and that he “simply did not show up”. Planalto sources minimized the importance of Lula not having met with Zelenski at the time.

Later, in an interview in Kiev with Sheet and other Latin American press outlets, the Ukrainian president gave a different version, saying that his team was not to blame for the episode. During the conversation, he also criticized the PT member for his lack of support for the creation of a special international court to judge crimes of aggression in war and said, ironically, that the Brazilian leader wants to be “original” in his proposals.

Still in the conversation with journalists, Lula emphasized the meeting with American President Joe Biden, which takes place this Wednesday before the bilateral meeting with Zelenski. “It’s the first time in Brazil’s 500 years of existence that you sit down with a President of the American Republic on equal terms to discuss a chronic problem,” she said.

The meeting’s agenda is decent work in the 21st century. The two presidents will present a joint initiative between Brazil and the United States after the meeting. “Let’s see if we can point out to society, and especially to youth, an alternative,” he said.

When asked if he liked the speech made this Tuesday morning, the president replied: “I liked it, I made it.”

In addition to Biden and Zelenski, Lula meets this Wednesday with the president of the WHO (World Health Organization), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, and the president of Paraguay, Santiago Peña.

He returns to Brasília at night. Previously, the forecast was that the PT member would leave the United States on Thursday morning, but his return was brought forward.

In his speech this Tuesday, the PT member returned to themes that had already permeated his speeches, such as combating inequality and hunger. However, he was more incisive in his criticism of the international system, and called on other countries to act.

“We must, first of all, overcome the resignation that makes us accept such injustice as a natural phenomenon. To overcome inequality, there is a lack of political will from those who govern the world,” he stated.

One of the targets of Lula’s criticism was the IMF (International Monetary Fund). The president pointed out that last year the institution lent US$160 billion to European countries and only US$34 billion to African countries.

The president attacked the unequal representation of the fund and the World Bank, in which countries that contribute more resources have greater voting weight. For Lula, this is “unacceptable”.