(Reuters) – Ukraine’s senior presidential adviser, Mykhailo Podolyak, on Thursday blasted comments by former Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva that Ukraine shouldered equal blame for Moscow’s invasion, describing them as “Russian attempts to distort the reality.”
Lula, the leftist front-runner in polls forward of Brazil’s October election, mentioned in an interview with Time journal printed on Wednesday that Russia by no means ought to have invaded Ukraine. But he mentioned Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy is as a lot to blame for the conflict as Russian chief Vladimir Putin.
Lula, who was on the duvet of the weekly journal, additionally mentioned U.S. President Joe Biden might have completed extra to stop the battle and accused Biden of “inciting” it.
“Brazilian ex-president Lula da Silva talks in regards to the guilt of Ukraine or the West within the conflict. These are Russian attempts to distort the reality. It’s easy: Russia treacherously attacked Ukraine… Classic conflict of destruction & occupation,” Podolyak wrote in a tweet, with out giving additional particulars.
Lula’s comments point out that neither of the primary two contenders in Brazil’s October presidential election are seemingly to put a lot stress on Putin and Russia, which calls its actions in Ukraine a “particular operation” to disarm the nation.
Current Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro is an admirer of the Russian president and flew to meet him in Moscow earlier than the invasion, ignoring U.S. entreaties not to go.
(Reporting by Gabriel Stargardter in Rio de Janeiro; Editing by Rosalba O’Brien and Matthew Lewis)
