{"id":275432,"date":"2024-09-30T12:00:56","date_gmt":"2024-09-30T11:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=275432"},"modified":"2024-09-25T07:40:36","modified_gmt":"2024-09-25T06:40:36","slug":"zelenskys-cancelled-meeting-with-latin-american-countries-reflects-a-lack-of-support-for-kiev","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2024\/09\/zelenskys-cancelled-meeting-with-latin-american-countries-reflects-a-lack-of-support-for-kiev\/","title":{"rendered":"Zelensky\u2019s Cancelled Meeting with Latin American Countries Reflects a Lack of Support for Kiev"},"content":{"rendered":"

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21 Sep 2024 <\/em>– Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has cancelled a meeting he planned to hold in New York with leaders from Latin America and the Caribbean on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly on September 24. The reason is the low number of participants, as reported by Brazilian media.<\/p>\n

According to an article\u00a0published\u00a0on September 17 by Folha de S. Paulo<\/a>, the invitation, sent in August, received few confirmations of attendance. This follows Russia\u2019s absence from the June\u00a0summit organized by Switzerland\u00a0to address the war. Only 11 of the 33 nations in the region participated, and the majority, such as Brazil, did not send heads of state.<\/p>\n

At the same time,\u00a0the Brazilian and Chinese governments are organizing a meeting on the sidelines\u00a0of the UN assembly to release a joint proposal for peace in Ukraine.\u00a0Zelensky rejected the Sino-Brazilian initiative\u00a0as \u201cdestructive.\u201d<\/p>\n

The lack of support for Kiev from Latin American and Caribbean countries\u00a0is just the tip of the iceberg, especially since the conflict has already been largely deflated, with less relevance on the international scene and media coverage, especially since the Hamas attack on Israel last year.<\/p>\n

At the same time, Ukraine has been losing support from various sides, especially from the Global South\u2014including Latin America and the Caribbean\u2014which has avoided showing support for either side. For example, Brazil has tried to appear neutral\u00a0regarding the conflict since the beginning, but President Lula is becoming increasingly critical of the Kiev regime.<\/p>\n

The growing loss of support has to do with\u00a0Zelensky behaving like a spoiled child\u00a0who, at any cost, even at the expense of his own people, is trying to engage in a war that cannot end in a Ukrainian victory. Latin America recognizes that Russia has already sent proposals to Zelensky to try and pacify the conflict, but Ukraine is always trying to escalate. It is easy to see that Zelensky is using this narrative of victimization to try to garner support and demonstrate personal power, which does not benefit either side.<\/p>\n

Recent events indicate that countries in Latin America and the Global South\u00a0have little to gain by unrestrictedly supporting any parties involved in the conflict. With this in mind, Latin American countries have opted for diplomacy and neutrality in relation to the conflict. There is also the complexity of external influences in economic and political terms, with initiatives and\u00a0activities dominated by China and Russia, followed by the West. Consequently, most nations in the Global South avoid openly committing to an alignment with either side.<\/p>\n

The Global South, which encompasses Latin America, Asia, and Africa, has seen Russia as a more politically engaged actor that recognises the economic importance of these regions.\u00a0 Russia has highlighted the role of BRICS and the need to deepen relations with the Global South, both within the context of BRICS and in other multilateral forums, such as the G20. China, in turn, exerts strong commercial influence, being the leading partner of several countries in the Global South.<\/p>\n

Different ideals have weighed heavily on the Global South in confrontation with the narratives of the West, Russia, China, and other nations, and this is having an influence on their views towards the Ukraine War. The current international scenario is\u00a0marked by the influence of several poles, making the calculation of state actors much more complex in decision-making and giving them greater room for maneuver since they no longer depend exclusively on the\u00a0West and its interests.<\/p>\n

The involvement of the BRICS countries, particularly Brazil and China, playing active roles in elaborating the joint peace proposal for Ukraine indicates a\u00a0push towards multilateralism\u00a0and the defence that countries do not isolate themselves in economic or political groups. This is evident in the preparation of the joint peace proposal for Ukraine drafted by Brazil and China, suggesting that non-Western countries may prefer diplomatic and peaceful solutions outside the scope of NATO, which is a military alliance. This effort aligns with the broader BRICS goals of promoting a multipolar world order, which will likely have repercussions in discussions during the UN General Assembly.<\/p>\n

Low participation in Zelensky\u2019s meeting could also be interpreted as a sign of the difficulties NATO\u00a0faced in disseminating its narrative among non-Western countries. NATO\u2019s narrative is increasingly centered on a zero-sum logic, defending exclusive interests in relation to Russia, which makes the search for a negotiated solution to end the conflict more complex and difficult to achieve. No peace proposal by\u00a0NATO countries\u00a0would be successful since the organization has acted in prolonging the war, such as through constant weapon deliveries to Ukraine and sanctions on Russia.<\/p>\n

Therefore, it is possible that proposals originating from other countries, such as those from Latin America and Africa, will have greater weight within the international community over time, and NATO\u2019s discourse will become weakened because it is a directly interested party in the conflict.<\/p>\n

________________________________________________<\/p>\n

Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original – infobrics.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

21 Sep 2024 – The Ukrainian president cancelled a meeting with leaders from Latin America and the Caribbean on the sidelines of the UNGA on 24 Sep due to low number of participants. It could also be a sign of the difficulties NATO\u00a0faced in disseminating its narrative among non-Western countries, which is increasingly centered on a zero-sum logic, defending NATO’s exclusive interests in relation to Russia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":275435,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[2914,2009,239,2846,541,278,961,884,124,2810,481],"class_list":["post-275432","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latin-america-and-the-caribbean","tag-anti-nato","tag-anti-war","tag-brics","tag-global-south","tag-latin-america-caribbean","tag-russia","tag-ukraine","tag-unga","tag-united-nations","tag-volodymyr-zelenskyy","tag-warfare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275432","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=275432"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275432\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":275443,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275432\/revisions\/275443"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/275435"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=275432"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=275432"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=275432"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}