Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has pledged to press his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin to attend negotiations with Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Turkiye, adding to calls on Moscow to enter talks and end its three-year war,
Al Jazeera reports.
Lula is expected to stop in the Russian capital on the way back from attending a regional forum in China.
“I’ll try to talk to Putin,” Lula said at a news conference in Beijing on Wednesday before his departure.
“It costs me nothing to say, ‘hey, comrade Putin, go to Istanbul and negotiate, dammit,'” he said.
The negotiations, expected to take place on Thursday in Turkiye’s commercial hub, Istanbul, would be the first direct talks between Kyiv and Moscow since 2022, shortly after Russia’s full-scale invasion of its neighbour.
Lula’s comments come after the Ukrainian foreign minister urged Brazil to use its influence with Russia to secure a face-to-face meeting between Putin and Zelenskyy.
Brazil and China issued a joint statement on Tuesday calling for direct negotiations as the “only way to end the conflict”.
