In mid-May, the government of Ukraine provocatively named Deputy Foreign Ministry Andrij Melnyk, the disgraced former ambassador to Germany and defender of Hitler collaborator Stepan Bandera, as the new ambassador to Brazil. Melnyk was forced out as ambassador to Germany in July, 2022 after insulting German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and the German population with obscenity-laced public statements, in which he defended Bandera as a “freedom fighter” and denying that he murdered thousands of Jews, Russians and Poles during World War II.
This is clearly a deployment against Brazil whose President Lula da Silva has been organizing internationally on behalf of his “club of peace” proposal and maintaining an “equidistant” position, as one daily put it, so as not to get roped into supporting one side or another in the Ukraine conflict. The U.S. and its trans-Atlantic NATO allies have targeted Brazil, along with India, Indonesia, and other “neutrals,” to try to drag them into the pro-Ukraine alliance.
Brazil has vulnerabilities that the NATO crowd will try to exploit. Its domestic situation is fragile, both economically and politically. Lula does not have broad congressional support and the right-wing, Nazi-leaning networks of former President Jair Bolsonaro, including some within the military, remain very active. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has demanded that more countries of the Global South support Ukraine. Melnyk is reportedly already in Brasilia and, according to several analysts, will be operating to swing the Brazilian government and public opinion, as well as some of Brazil’s neighbors, into the pro-Ukraine camp.
