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US, EU must stop ‘encouraging war’ in Ukraine: Brazil’s Lula

Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva (Photo by AFP)

The Brazilian president has called on the US and its European allies to stop “encouraging war” in Ukraine by arming Kiev, adding that they should rather focus on promoting peace in Ukraine.

“The United States needs to stop encouraging war and start talking about peace,” President Lula da Silva said at a Saturday press briefing in Beijing while commenting about the persisting Ukraine conflict.

“The European Union needs to start talking about peace,” he further emphasized in remarks just before concluding a state visit to China, which remains Brazil’s largest trading partner.

“It is important to have patience, but above all, it is necessary to convince the countries that are supplying weapons [and] encouraging the war, to stop,” Lula went on to underline.

In doing so, he added, world leaders might be able to “convince” both Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Ukrainian counterpart Vladimir Zelensky that “peace is in the interest of the entire world.”

Both Brazil and China remain among the major global economic powers that have refused to join the brutal US-led sanctions against Russia following the onset of the Ukraine conflict last year.

Earlier in his China visit, the Brazilian president also lashed out at the monstrous role of the US dollar in the global economy weeks after the two nations forged an accord to replace the dollar with their own currencies in trade deals.

"Why should every country have to be tied to the dollar for trade? Who decided the dollar would be the world's currency?" Lula asked at a Thursday ceremony in China’s largest city and global financial hub, Shanghai.

"Why can't a bank like the BRICS bank have a currency to finance trade between Brazil and China, between Brazil and other BRICS countries? Today, countries have to chase after dollars to export, when they could be exporting in their own currencies," he added, referring to BRICS member nations – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.

Lula’s administration declared last month that China and Brazil had reached a deal to trade in their own currencies, ditching the US dollar as an intermediary.

China is Brazil's biggest trading partner, with a record $150.5 billion in bilateral trade last year.


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