BRASILIA (Reuters) -Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva will meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in New York on Wednesday while they are attending the United Nations General Assembly, the office of the Brazilian presidency said on Monday.
Lula has advocated the creation of a group of nations to mediate an end to the war between Russia and Ukraine, but in May he stated that both Moscow and Kyiv were to blame for the conflict, angering the United States and European states who back Ukrainian resistance to the Russian invasion.
Last month, the Brazilian leftist leader told reporters neither Zelenskiy nor Russian President Vladimir Putin were ready for peace.
Lula and Zelenskiy have never met, though they spoke by video call in March days after Brazil voted for a U.N. resolution that called for peace and demanded Moscow withdraw its troops.
Ukraine’s embassy in Brasilia confirmed Wednesday’s meeting.
The two men will meet at Lula’s hotel after the Brazilian leader meets U.S. President Joe Biden, two sources in the Brazilian government said on condition of anonymity.
The Ukrainian government asked for the meeting between Zelenskiy and Lula after the two men did not meet at the G7 summit in the Japanese city of Hiroshima earlier this year.
In May, Lula’s foreign policy adviser Celso Amorim traveled to Kyiv and met Zelenskiy, six weeks after he went to Moscow to meet with Putin.
Zelenskiy said on social media he told Amorim the only way to end the war was his peace plan that calls for the withdrawal of Russian troops and restoration of Ukraine’s borders.
(Reporting by Lisandra Paraguassu and Anthony Boadle; Editing by Paul Simao and Grant McCool)
