Ukraine’s Zelensky Sends Tepid Congratulations to Brazil’s Lula, Who Mocked Him as ‘Nice Comedian’

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was among the many world leaders lining up to congratulate corrupt socialist Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva on Monday over his victory over conservative President Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil’s presidential election.

Zelensky’s celebratory message, posted to Twitter, is notable as Lula has vocally accused Zelensky of instigating Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine, which began five years before Zelensky became president.

In an interview with Time magazine in May, the 77-year-old Lula insulted Zelensky as a fame-hungry “nice comedian,” accusing him of escalating the war for attention.

Lula previously served as the nation’s president from 2003 to 2011 as a hard leftist, aligning Brazil, a longtime American ally, with its enemies China and Russia.

In 2006, Lula helped found the BRICS coalition (then simply BRIC), which bound Brazil economically and in security cooperation with Russia and China, as well as India and, later, South Africa. Membership in BRICS significantly hindered Bolsonaro’s ability to distance the country from Russia and China in particular, despite campaign promises throughout 2018 that, as president, he would “put a foot in the ass of socialism.”

Russian leader Vladimir Putin offered a much more enthusiastic congratulations to Lula on Monday.

“Congratulations to [Lula] on his victory in the presidential election of Brazil,” Zelensky wrote on Twitter in Portuguese. “I trust in an active collaboration with a longtime friend of Ukraine and in the reinforcement of the strategic partnership [Ukraine-Brazil] to ensure democracy, peace, security, and prosperity in Ukraine, Brazil, and the entire world!”

Lula’s official Twitter account has spent much of the past 24 hours reposting messages of congratulations from around the world but has not addressed Zelensky’s message or shared it alongside other world leaders at press time.

Brazil is not a major player in the Ukrainian conflict under Bolsonaro, declaring neutrality – maintaining the lines of communication with Zelensky open while opposing sanctions on Russia and buying Russian oil. Lula, as a longtime friend and ally of Putin’s, may potentially take Brazil off the sidelines. As a major purveyor of critical crops and purchaser of Russian oil, South America’s largest economy could prove a decisive actor in the war.

In a glowing profile published by Time in May that declared Lula a “white knight” saving Brazil from conservatism, Lula defied the script of many center-left voices in the Anglosphere by insulting Zelensky and complaining that other world leaders have been too friendly to the Ukrainian president.

“I see the President of Ukraine, speaking on television, being applauded, getting a standing ovation by all the [European] parliamentarians,” Lula said at the time. “This guy is as responsible as Putin for the war. Because in the war, there’s not just one person guilty.”

“You are encouraging this guy [Zelensky], and then he thinks he is the cherry on your cake. We should be having a serious conversation,” Lula continued. “OK, you were a nice comedian. But let us not make war for you to show up on TV.”

In contrast to Lula, Bolsonaro had maintained friendly relations with Zelensky, even while refusing to join regional statement sin support of Ukraine and actively opposing attempts to sanction Russia in response to the escalation of the eight-year-old war in February.

“He was the one who sought to talk to us. And I said right away that I would talk to him, yes,” Bolsonaro said of Zelensky in July, following a phone conversation with him. “He has a big country to run. Everything that was agreed with [Russian] President Putin is being fulfilled. On my part and on his part. I will talk to him a lot. He is a leader and I will give my opinion to him.”

That month, Bolsonaro bizarrely declared that he had “solved” the war in Ukraine, “but I won’t tell anyone.” He later promised to give Zelensky the secret to ending the war, but neither Bolsonaro nor Zelensky ever revealed more information about this claim.

Zelensky became president of Ukraine in 2019, four years after Putin invaded and colonized Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula, in a heated presidential race against strident anti-Russian incumbent Petro Poroshenko. At the time, Zelensky was a famous professional actor, starring in the popular sitcom Servant of the People in which he played a schoolteacher who accidentally becomes president of the country. Railing against Poroshenko for alleged corruption and incompetence, using absurdist humor to derail the Poroshenko campaign, Zelensky defeated the incumbent, prompting warnings that he may turn Kyiv into a “pro-Russian” capital.

Sunday’s election in Brazil was of a much different character, essentially pitting two incumbents against each other, as Lula had already served two terms. While polls predicted a close race, the final tally resulted in a difference of barely a little more than a percentage point, or two million votes in a nation of 214 million people. Lula received 50.9 percent of the vote to Bolsonaro’s 49.1 percent. Bolsonaro has neither conceded nor appeared in public since the election at press time.

Like Zelensky, Putin published a congratulatory message to his old friend Lula. Putin used the Russian messaging application Telegram to relay his message, according to the Russian news agency TASS.

“Please accept my heartfelt congratulations on winning the presidential election. The vote’s results confirm your high political authority,” Putin said, contradicting the extremely close nature of the race. “I expect that our joint efforts will ensure further development of constructive Russia-Brazil cooperation in all areas.”

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