Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva will lobby China to join a so-called "peace club" of nations mediating a negotiated settlement to the war in Ukraine while on a visit to Beijing this week, the Financial Times reported on March 24.
“We are very interested in promoting or helping generate some kind of meeting that would lead to a peace process,” Brazil's foreign minister Mauro Vieira said in an interview to Financial Times.
The president, better known simply as Lula, is looking to reestablish Brazil's diplomatic presence after he defeated the isolationist incumbent Jair Bolsonaro in October last year.
Lula's visit comes just days after Chinese President Xi Jinping made a much-anticipated visit to Moscow, where he met with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin.
During the March 20 meeting, Xi called Russia's war "a Ukrainian crisis," adding that Moscow and Beijing "share similar goals."
China published a 12-point document in late February, offering to use it as a basis for future peace talks between Ukraine and Russia.
China's proposed peace plan does not envision complete withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukraine, with Ukrainian and Western officials criticizing the document for favoring Russia.
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