BRASILIA (Reuters) – The White House on Friday criticized Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro’s visit this week to Moscow within the midst of the Ukraine disaster, saying the overwhelming majority of the worldwide group oppose a Russian invasion.
“I feel Brazil could also be on the opposite facet of the place the worldwide group stands,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki mentioned.
On Thursday, the State Department issued a robust rebuke of Bolsonaro’s expression of “solidarity” for Russia whereas visiting Russian President Vladimir Putin on the Kremlin.
With plenty of Russian troops close to Ukraine’s borders elevating fears of an invasion, the United States had referred to as on Bolsonaro to postpone his journey to Moscow, however he went forward with it.
On Wednesday, standing alongside Putin, Bolsonaro mentioned in an announcement he was “in solidarity with Russia,” with out elaborating.
“The timing of the president of Brazil expressing solidarity with Russia, simply as Russian forces are getting ready to launch assaults on Ukrainian cities, couldn’t be worse,” a State Department spokesperson mentioned.
“It undermines worldwide diplomacy directed at averting a strategic and humanitarian catastrophe, in addition to Brazil’s personal calls for a peaceable decision to the disaster,” the textual content of the assertion seen by Reuters mentioned.
Brazilian diplomats informed Reuters that Brazil’s Foreign Ministry, often known as Itamaraty, was taken unexpectedly by the robust State Department rebuke, which they discovered about by means of the media.
“How do you reply to a textual content that you just should not have,” one diplomat mentioned, talking on situation of anonymity since he was not approved to focus on the matter.
“Our contacts with the State Department are frequent and at all times pleasant on the bilateral agenda. They are usually not guided by nameless statements circulated within the press,” he mentioned.
The U.S. feedback amounted to unusually brusque criticism of the federal government of Latin America’s largest nation, with which the United States often has cordial relations.
Bolsonaro was a robust ideological ally of former president Donald Trump and relations have cooled beneath the administration of President Joe Biden, amid ructions over local weather change and different points.
“This is a matter of Brazil, as an necessary nation, seeming to ignore armed aggression by a big energy towards a smaller neighbor nation, a posture inconsistent with Brazil’s historic emphasis on peace and diplomacy,” the State Department mentioned.
(Reporting by Lisandra Paraguassu; Writing by Anthony Boadle; enhancing by Diane Craft)
