Ukraine war in Newsblog | Lula declines Putin’s invitation to St. Petersburg

Day 457 since the beginning of the war: Scholz dampens expectations that Ukraine will soon join NATO. Russia attacked a clinic. All information in the news blog.

7:59 p.m.: Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has declined an invitation from Russian President Vladimir Putin to St. Petersburg in a telephone conversation. “I thanked (Putin) for the invitation to the International Economic Forum in St. Petersburg and replied that I cannot come to Russia at the moment,” Lula wrote on Twitter on Friday. “But I have confirmed that Brazil, like India, Indonesia and China, is ready for dialogue with both parties in the conflict in order to achieve peace,” added the Brazilian president, referring to the Ukraine war.

Although Brazil has condemned the Russian war of aggression, it is urging Ukraine to negotiate peace. Lula has proposed his country as a mediator, along with other “neutral” states such as China and Indonesia. The Brazilian president was recently criticized after accusing western countries of prolonging the war with their arms deliveries.

A meeting between Lula and his Ukrainian colleague Volodymyr Zelenskyj at the G7 summit in Japan fell through a few days ago. Lula said afterwards that he saw no point in meeting Zelenskyj at the moment. Neither Zelenskyy nor Putin are interested in peace.

According to the Kremlin on Friday, Putin confirmed in the phone call with Lula that Moscow is open to “political and diplomatic dialogue” with regard to Ukraine. However, the talks are “blocked” by Kiev and its western allies. The Economic Forum in St. Petersburg will take place on June 14-17.

7:28 p.m.: A month and a half before the NATO summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) dampened expectations that Ukraine would soon join the defense alliance. The summit will “above all be about organizing concrete support for Ukraine in this situation,” Scholz said after a meeting with representatives of the Baltic states on Friday in Tallinn in response to a question about Kiev’s desire for an official invitation from the NATO at the July summit.

The question at stake now is “how we can improve cooperation in the specific situation of the Russian attack on Ukraine and how we can make it clear that we will maintain this support for as long as it is necessary,” explained scholz

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said on Wednesday that the member countries were divided over the question of Ukraine’s accession. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has been invited to the NATO summit on July 11-12 in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius.

3:31 p.m.: According to the Ministry of Defense in Kiev, Ukraine expects 48 F-16 fighter jets to free itself from the Russian occupation. “Four squadrons of F-16s (48 aircraft) are just what we need to rid our country of the aggressor,” the ministry said on Twitter.

In addition, the agency published a cartoon of a man grating a tower of the Moscow Kremlin on a vegetable grater with blades in the shape of airplanes. Recently, the air force had spoken of dozens of pilots without giving exact numbers.