In a break with other leftist leaders worldwide, Brazil’s Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has insisted that the United States needs to stop encouraging the war in Ukraine, a message that is likely to rile the U.S. war lobby, as well as its political fellow travelers.

Speaking to reporters in Beijing, where the communist leader met with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping, Lula explained: “The United States needs to stop encouraging war and start talking about peace; the European Union needs to start talking about peace so that we can convince Putin and Zelensky that peace is in the interest of everyone and that war is only interesting, for now, to the two of them.”

He suggested this could be brought about by a new group of countries negotiating a settlement:

“I have a theory that I have already defended with Macron, with Olaf Scholz of Germany, and with Biden, and yesterday, we discussed at length with Xi Jinping. It is necessary to constitute a group of countries willing to find a way to make peace…”

Quizzed upon whether or not he had made progress on this issue with fellow world leaders, Lula shot back: “It is important to have patience… [b]ut above all, it is necessary to convince the countries that are supplying weapons, encouraging the war, to stop”.

The latter comment is a direct dig at the European Union, United Kingdom, NATO, and the United States – all of which have been fostering the conditions for conflict since prior to the Western-sponsored Maidan revolution in 2014.

This past week, veteran news man Seymour Hersh revealed that Ukrainian President Zelensky and his generals stand accused of embezzling hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign assistance. The news came in the same week that the Kiev city council considered renaming a street in honor of a leading Nazi operative, who is still celebrated in the country to this day.