Brazilian soccer players based in Ukraine pleaded for their government to help evacuate them from the country on Thursday, as President Jair Bolsonaro and his vice president publicly disputed how to refer to the war.
“Due to lack of fuel, closed borders, closed airspace, we cannot go out. We are asking for support from the government of Brazil, which can help us,” Marlon Santos, who plays for Shakhtar Donetsk, said in a video, speaking alongside 11 other Brazilian footballers and their families.
Shakhtar Donetsk is one of Ukraine’s most popular and successful soccer clubs, becoming the first club in independent Ukraine to the Europe-wide UEFA Cup in 2009. In recent years, it has been forced to relocate away from the city of Donetsk. Last season it played in Kyiv.
A spokesperson from the Brazilian Foreign Ministry, Leonardo Gorgulho, said on Thursday that the government does not currently have a means to safely rescue the estimated 500 Brazilians living in Ukraine. “The evacuation will be carried out as soon as we have security conditions,” Gorgulho said.
Bolsonaro, VP, dispute how to refer to the war: Meanwhile, President Bolsonaro, who visited his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin last week, was at odds with his own vice president on Thursday over how to refer to the war in Ukraine.
During a live broadcast on his social media, Bolsonaro refrained from calling the situation in Ukraine a war or an invasion and said he will meet with his ministers “so that we can have a dimension of what is happening and Brazil will have its position (on the issue).”
However, earlier on Thursday, Vice President Hamilton Mourão condemned the Russian invasion of Ukraine and called for actions beyond economic sanctions on Putin’s government.
“Brazil is not neutral. Brazil does not agree with an invasion of Ukrainian territory,” he said.
Bolsonaro, on his Facebook live, however, said that Brazil’s official position on the matter was up to him as President, not to Mourão.
A news release from the Brazilian Foreign Ministry on Thursday also refrained from describing the situation in Ukraine an invasion or a war. The ministry called for an “immediate suspension of hostilities and the beginning of negotiations.”
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