Brazil’s Bolsonaro embraced the U.S. under Trump. Now he’s in ‘solidarity’ with Russia.

In a remarkable diplomatic display Wednesday, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who resisted both domestic and international appeals by U.S. officials to cancel his visit to Moscow, sat knee-to-knee with Putin and declared that Brazil was in “solidarity” with Russia. Putin then named Brazil to be Russia’s most important partner in Latin America.

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Bolsonaro did not specify in what regard Brazil was in solidarity with Russia, but his comments and visit with Putin are certain be interpreted as tacit support for Russia at a moment when the West is calling it a belligerent military power poised to plunge Europe into war.

For Brazil, the meeting amounted to a remarkable about-face for a president who has spent years embracing the American flag, cultivating a network of Republican contacts and evoking Soviet-style socialism and communism as global evils that Brazil must repudiate. It also again betrayed Bolsonaro’s personalistic approach to foreign policy. He loved the United States when President Donald Trump was in charge. Much less without him.

Now he’s brought Latin America’s largest and most powerful country into an embrace with one of the United States’ greatest foreign adversaries.

“We are in solidarity with Russia,” Bolsonaro told Putin. “We very much want to collaborate in many areas — defense, oil and gas, agriculture. The meetings are happening.”

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The meeting reflected Putin’s apparent gambit to outflank the West’s attempts at isolating Russia with stronger relationships in Latin America, far from its traditional sphere of influence. Putin in recent weeks has made calls to several Latin American leaders and also welcome to the Kremlin Argentine President Alberto Fernández. In the meeting, Fernández said he is “consistently working to rid Argentine” of its dependence on the United States.

The meeting also hinted at how chilled relations between the United States and Brazil have become since Trump’s 2020 electoral loss. Bolsonaro first echoed Trump’s unfounded claims that widespread fraud had undermined the presidential election. Then he was one of the last foreign leaders to recognized Joe Biden as president. More than one year into Biden’s term, the presidents of the two largest democracies in the Western Hemisphere still haven’t spoken.

U.S. officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters, said there were at least two high-level U.S. attempts to convince Bolsonaro to cancel the trip. Bolsonaro was told that such a trip would grant legitimacy to the Russia and make it look less isolated just when the West was unifying to forestall a potential Russian invasion. But Bolsonaro, who had reportedly been discontented by what he perceived to be a chilly relationship with Washington, decided to forge ahead with the trip.

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Neither Bolsonaro’s presidential office nor Brazil’s ministry of foreign relations responded to requests for comment.

News of the Moscow meeting has dominated Brazil, where for weeks there has been concern over potential diplomatic repercussions. Brazilian officials repeatedly said that Bolsonaro would steer clear of the crisis. They said he wanted to talk about energy and agriculture. If Ukraine came up, Bolsonaro said he would only support peace, diplomacy and the sovereignty of all countries. Further seeking to show neutrality, the foreign ministry released a message touting Brazil’s relations with Ukraine.

But as soon as Bolsonaro entered Russian airspace, he brought up the military crisis. He posted a photo on Twitter of CNN chryon showing news of a possible Russian withdrawal from the Ukrainian front. His allies then immediately jumped on the narrative, crediting Bolsonaro with averting a war. The hashtag #BolsonaroAvoidedAWar began to trend on social media.

Analysts said Bolsonaro’s comments on Wednesday will undermine the Brazilian government’s defense that it’s not taking sides in the Ukraine crisis.

“It was a mistake that will have negative repercussions in the West,” said Mauricio Santoro, a political scientist at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. “In the context of the current crisis, it may be interpreted as a statement of support of Putin in regards to Ukraine.”

Gabriela Sá Pessoa contributed to this report.

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