The Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro, has made a mini-tour of Europe this week, one of the most tense that the continent has experienced in recent decades due to the Ukrainian crisis, to meet with two leaders highly questioned by the West right now, the Russian Vladimir Putin and the Hungarian Viktor Orbán. The Latin American returns home with the photo he was looking for and without great achievements in bilateral matters, the declared objective of a trip that is, in principle, unrelated to the crisis surrounding Ukraine. He has indeed garnered harsh criticism from the United States for ignoring his pressure to cancel the trip and, as if that were not enough, publicly declaring in Moscow his “solidarity” with Putin. The trio is united by their values and by belonging to the informal club of national-populist leaders.
For Bolsonaro, this tour is due more to his interest in boosting his international image at home as part of an ultra-conservative alliance than to reverse the diplomatic isolation in which he has plunged Brazil. In his appearances with Putin and Orbán, he highlighted their affinities and the values that he shares with them: God, country and family (traditional family, he means). In Hungary, the Brazilian added freedom.
And he pronounced before Putin a phrase that has caused great anger in Washington while echoes of a new war in Europe sound. “We are in solidarity with the countries that want and are committed to peace,” Bolsonaro said on Wednesday during an appearance that, for the rest, totally ignored the Ukrainian crisis to highlight cooperation in agriculture or nuclear energy. For the US State Department, Bolsonaro’s attitude “undermines international diplomacy focused on avoiding a strategic and humanitarian disaster, as well as calls from Brazil itself to ask for a peaceful solution to the crisis,” the Reuters agency reported. An unusual tone in diplomacy between the two largest American countries.
The Brazilian president traveled to Moscow after turning a deaf ear to requests from the US to cancel the visit to Putin. And he landed just hours after the Russian announcement of a start of military withdrawal relieved tension (temporarily and between doubts about the demonstrations in Moscow), a circumstance that the Brazilian took advantage of to suggest in messages addressed to his faithful that the relaxation was his thing . Nothing less. “We kept our schedule. By coincidence or not, part of the troops left the border [con Ucrania]”, he declared after seeing Putin. The Brazilian is campaigning for re-election.
The Russian president received the Brazilian for almost two hours on Wednesday, precisely what according to US espionage was the D-day of the possible Russian invasion. Both chatted at the same long table where the leaders of France and Germany were received —Emmanuel Macron and Olaf Scholz, respectively—, but seated at a smaller distance, the one reserved for friends and those who, like Bolsonaro, agree to have a PCR in Moscow. And although there is no evidence that the Brazilian is vaccinated, they both shook hands.
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The electoral defeat of the American Donald Trump in 2020 and the departure from power of the Israeli Benjamin Netanyahu have left Bolsonaro without the preferential allies at the beginning of his term. His management of the Amazon and the systematic dismantling of environmental policy have embittered the relationship with the European Union, especially with Macron’s France. Deforestation, the worst in 15 years in the largest tropical forest in the world, keeps the ratification process of the trade agreement between the EU and Mercosur bogged down.
The meetings with the leaders of Russia and Hungary included many mentions of bilateral trade, defense cooperation, nuclear energy or the environment, but few agreements. For the editorialist of the newspaper Stadium, center-right, the visit “to two authoritarian populists is inopportune and counterproductive for national interests.” He adds that “it is only explained by its electoral logic.”
With Bolsonaro and the end of the economic boom at the beginning of the 21st century, the times when Brazil rubbed shoulders with the great powers and dazzled the world are long gone. Brasilia has a limited economic relationship with Moscow, but “having close political relations with other great powers like Russia helps Brazil manage its highly asymmetrical relationship with Washington,” Oliver Stuenkel, an analyst at the Getulio Vargas Foundation, tweeted these days. He recalled that when Putin annexed Crimea in 2014, the then president, Dilma Rousseff, did not criticize him because the BRICs, the club of emerging countries that both form with China, India and South Africa, were the diplomatic priority of the moment.
With Trump out of the White House, Bolsonaro has been forced to intensify relations with similar leaders such as Putin, who also maintains a pulse with the United States. Next to him, he repeated twice that Brazil is a power and made an effort to appear that they are on an equal footing in the international sphere, a message for internal consumption. He shows that this was the priority is the fact that the presidential delegation included one of his sons, Carlos, who directs his campaign on social networks and is a councilor in Rio de Janeiro, but not the Minister of Economy, Paulo Guedes.
The Russian invitation was sent at the end of last year and the main issue on the Brazilian agenda was the supply of Russian fertilizers, crucial for the gigantic agricultural sector of Latin America’s leading economy. The next day, in Budapest, Bolsonaro had a shorter meeting with Orbán, whom he introduced as a “brother.” The Hungarian is, with Poland, in the crosshairs of the European institutions due to his authoritarian drift and on the eve of elections that appear complicated; he was one of the few heads of government who attended his inauguration in Brasilia.
Back in Brazil this Friday, Bolsonaro went directly to Petrópolis (Rio de Janeiro) to visit those affected by heavy rains. The dead in this mountainous city that was the imperial summer capital now number 120 and firefighters are looking for over a hundred missing persons.
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