Socialist Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva proclaimed himself “upset” on Sunday that his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky, scheduled an in-person meeting with him this weekend and failed to show.
Lula and Zelensky were both in Hiroshima, Japan, attending the G7 summit. Neither Brazil nor Ukraine is a member of the G7, but members typically invite a large group of influential countries to meet with them and discuss topics of global concern. Japanese Prime Minister Kishida Fumio invited Zelensky to the summit, specifically to discuss the ongoing Russian invasion of his country and the G7’s support for Kyiv’s efforts to expel Russia from its territory.
Lula has spent the first five months of his third term as president loudly demanding a role as mediator in the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The hardline socialist became president for a third time in January after defeating then-incumbent conservative Jair Bolsonaro in last year’s presidential election. Prior to that, Lula served as president from 2003 to 2011, during which he developed close ties with Russian leader Vladimir Putin and helped establish the BRICS coalition, which Brazil and Russia form a part of alongside India, China, and South Africa.
As a candidate last year, Lula dismissed Zelensky as a “nice comedian” — a reference to Zelensky’s career as a sitcom actor prior to his election to the presidency in 2019 — in an interview with Time magazine, where he also implied Zelensky was exacerbating the violence in his country to get more airtime on international television.
Neither Lula nor Zelensky mentioned Lula’s offensive comments this weekend in relation to Zelensky’s no-show at his bilateral talks with the Brazilian leader.
“I had a bilateral meeting with Ukraine here in this hall at 3:15 p.m.,” Lula explained to reporters in Hiroshima on Sunday, according to the Brazilian news outlet UOL. “We waited and kept getting information that they were delayed. So then I met with the president of Vietnam.”
“When the president of Vietnam left, the president of Ukraine did not appear. He assuredly had other commitments and couldn’t come here. That was, unfortunately, what happened,” the president explained.
The office of the presidency of Ukraine claimed in a readout on Sunday that Zelenzky participated in at least one event alongside a Brazilian delegation, a sideline event titled “Towards a Peaceful, Stable, and Prosperous World.” It did not note if Lula was in attendance or if Brazilian diplomats participated instead.
When asked about the incident on Sunday, Zelensky attributed his absence at the meeting to onerous presidential schedules.
“I met everyone — almost everyone — all the leaders, and all of them have their own schedules, so I think that that is why we couldn’t meet with the Brazilian president,” Zelensky said. Asked if he was disappointed he could not meet Lula, the Ukrainian president appeared to mock him. “I think it disappointed him,” he said, smirking.
“I wasn’t disappointed, I was upset,” Lula snapped back when addressing Zelensky’s response.
“Zelensky is a grown-up. He knows what he’s doing,” Lula reportedly said.
UOL claimed Lula said, “there won’t be a lack of opportunity” to talk to Zelensky again, but other sources described the Brazilian president as exasperated with the situation, proclaiming Russia and Ukraine “do not want to talk about peace,” so any Brazilian mediation was worthless at the moment.
The statement appeared to be an admission of defeat for a world leader publicly angling for a seat at the Ukraine negotiating table since his inauguration in January.
“If I can help, I will help. But if the need arises to hold talks with Putin and Zelensky, I will be ready to discuss peace settlement efforts, no problem.” Lula said late in that month. “What we really need is to bring together a group of people powerful enough to be respected at the negotiating table. And we should engage with both of them.”
The Ukrainian state outlet Ukrinform reported on Saturday that Lula had scheduled talks with Zelensky this weekend, which pointedly noted that Lula’s offers to help ended at mediation.
“Lula has previously called for a ceasefire in Ukraine. At the same time, he has refused to provide weapons to Ukraine, made comments ascribing some blame to Ukraine for Russia’s invasion, and said the U.S. and Europe are stimulating the fighting,” Ukrinform reported.
In an interview with Time last year, in which the magazine depicted him as the Marxist “white knight” saving Brazil from conservatism, Lula expressed disdain for Zelensky and implied that the Ukrainian president was enjoying the publicity he was receiving as a result of the “special operation” that Putin announced to oust Zelensky in February 2022.
“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.”