June 19 (Reuters) – President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has accepted an offer from Brazilian leader Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva to help work for a peace deal in Russia’s war in Ukraine, a Ukrainian presidential adviser said on Friday.
Zelenskiy and Lula met on the sidelines of the Group of Seven summit in the French resort of Evian-les-Bains on Wednesday, where the Ukrainian leader urged allies to increase pressure on Russia to end the more than four-year-old war.
The two presidents discussed what could reactivate diplomacy and Lula proposed several ideas, including contacts with permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, presidential communications adviser Dmytro Lytvyn told reporters.
“They agreed that, in particular, based on such ideas and contacts, they would try to achieve something and later they would discuss it based on the results,” Lytvyn said.
Aside from the United States, France and Britain – with whom Ukraine has close diplomatic contact – the permanent Security Council members are Russia and China.
A U.S.-backed mediation effort earlier this year stalled amid Russia’s insistence on further territorial concessions from Ukraine, something Kyiv staunchly refuses.
Zelenskiy has urged U.S. President Donald Trump to return to the mediation efforts and broker a face-to-face meeting between him and Vladimir Putin – something the Russian leader has ruled out for now.
Following the G7 meeting in Brazil, Lula said that in the past Zelenskiy had not expressed any interest in his offers of diplomatic efforts for peace, but now he had accepted them.
Lula told a news conference that he had already spoken with the leaders of all the five permanent members of the Security Council and he would do so again.
Ukraine has recently made a push to reinvigorate diplomacy to end the war as U.S.-brokered peace talks stalled due to the Iran war.
(Reporting by Anna Pruchnicka; Additional reporting by Eduardo Simoes in Sao Paulo; Editing by Nia Williams)
