Celso Amorim, Senior Advisor to the Presidency of Brazil. Photo: Wilson Dias/Brazil Agency.
Celso Amorim, head advisor to the Brazilian Presidency, met with President Vladimir Putin for a one hour meeting during a discreet trip to Moscow last week.
Amorim was received by the Secretary of the Security Council, Nikolai Patrushev, and by the Kremlin’s main advisor for international affairs, Yuri Ushakov. He also had lunch with Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who will visit Brasília on the 17th.
The two spoke a little about bilateral issues: the trade flow between Brazil and Russia, the supply of fertilizers, the possibility of using local currencies to offset exports and imports. Then they turned to questions relating to the armed conflict in Ukraine.
“To say that the doors are open [for a peace negotiation] would be an exaggeration, but to say that they are completely closed is not true either,” stated Amorim to CNN Brasil. “There is no magic solution [to stop the conflict]. But there will come a time when, on one side or the other, a realization will emerge that the cost of war — not just the political cost, but the human and economic cost — will be greater than the cost of the necessary concessions for peace.”
He continued: “My feeling is that this moment has not yet arrived, but it could come sooner than you think. And then the existence of a group of ‘neutral’ countries — quotes must be put here — can help”.
Since the start of the conflict in Ukraine, Putin has on rare occasion received foreign ministers or presidential advisers, but welcomed Amorim at the same table where Putin has received heads of state. In February, one of the few senior foreign officials to be received by Putin was Wang Yi, the China’s top diplomat.
Amorim, who was Lula’s former Foreign Minister, and is now his main advisor on external affairs, was in Russia for two days followed by France for two days.
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Russia’s Foreign Minister Serguei Lavrov is set to visit Brazil on April 17th. In recent days, the Ministry tweeted, “We will deepen mutually beneficial multifaceted partnerships with Brazil, Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela and develop relations with other Latin American countries..”
Celso Amorim has previously spoken exclusively to Kawsachun News in regard to Lula’s planned trip to China, telling us,
“President Lula’s trip to Beijing and Shanghai is very important, the reaffirmation of important friendship ties for a strategic partnership. It’s worth remembering that it is the third trip – it can be said that the first was Argentina and Uruguay at once. Then we were in the United States and this is the first trip outside the American continent.”
