Mexico, under President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, voted to condemn the invasion, though it refused to impose economic sanctions on Russia.

“There are some leaders who have not visited Ukraine once and have not seen what the brutal Russian aggression brought about, and why it is important to defend lives,” Zelenskyy said, adding “but they just want to achieve some kind of populism, they say things as if Ukraine is supposedly not ready to go for peace.”

Zelenskyy also criticized “different companies and big multinational companies that want to make millions trading with Russia”, adding that “unfortunately, the world is full of hypocrisy”.

Earlier this month, Lula told reporters in Abu Dhabi that two nations, Russia and Ukraine, had decided to go to war, and a day earlier in Beijing he said the United States must stop “stimulating” continued fighting. and start discussing peace.

Lula also suggested that Ukraine could cede Crimea to end the war, something Ukrainian Foreign Ministry spokesman Oleg Nikolenko and others rejected.

The Ukrainian president received the expected standing ovation from lawmakers from the Mexico-Ukraine Friendship Group, most of whom belong to opposition parties.

In 2022, Lopez Obrador denounced NATO’s policy of supporting Ukraine, affirming that it was equivalent to saying “I give the weapons and you the dead. It’s immoral.”

“How easy it is to say, ‘Here, I’m sending you this amount of money for weapons,’” ​​López Obrador said. “Couldn’t the war in Ukraine have been avoided? Of course it could.

López Obrador did not say how, other than Russia not invading. In 2022, half a dozen legislators from López Obrador’s Morena party helped create a “Mexico-Russia Friendship Committee” in Congress.

The Morena party said “we respect the freedom of thought of our members” after a youth group apparently affiliated with the party sent an open letter to the Russian ambassador supporting the invasion.

Russia has been doing something of a diplomatic push in Latin America this week. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov met with Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega on Wednesday, and the two commiserated on US sanctions.

Lavrov met on Thursday with the recently re-elected Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel, during the last leg of a Latin American tour that took him to Brazil, Nicaragua and Venezuela.