India, Brazil, South Africa, Pakistan and other major emerging economies rejected the Biden administration’s attempts to ally with the United States against Russia during the Ukraine conflict, Washington Post (WaPo) citing leaked Pentagon files.
India has no intention of taking a stand on the crisis over Ukraine, the newspaper reported Saturday, according to classified US intelligence documents allegedly leaked online by US National Guard soldier Jack Teixeira.
One document seen by The Washington Post indicates that at a meeting in February, India’s National Security Adviser Ajit Kumar Doval told Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrusev that New Delhi was resisting pressure to support a Western-backed UN resolution on Ukraine. He claimed that Doval assured the Russian official that India “will not deviate from its principled position in the past”.
Another leaked document said Brazil was more interested in mediating the conflict than supporting Washington and its allies. Russia supports the idea of a “global peace bloc” aimed at resolving the Ukraine crisis, which was put forward by Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva during his visit to China earlier this month. According to the document, Moscow believes this would balance the “aggressor-victim” narrative around western Kiev.
At the end of February, Brazil took delivery of the two warships of America’s archenemy, Iran, and according to one filing, Lula may have allowed the condition to “bolster his reputation as a global mediator and burnish Brazil’s image as a neutral power.”
The leaked information also revealed that when US Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited South Africa last year and raised the issue of Ukraine, local officials told him that Pretoria would not be “bullied” into making decisions contrary to its interests. – wrote the Washington Post.
An intelligence dossier dated 17 February reportedly described discussions between Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and his staff about the upcoming UN vote on Ukraine. According to the document, the aide drew the prime minister’s attention to the fact that support for the Western-backed resolution would signal a change in Islamabad’s stance, after it had previously refrained from a similar plan. The newspaper quoted the president as saying that such a move would threaten important trade and energy agreements with Russia. Pakistan was among the 23 countries that abstained when the United Nations General Assembly voted a week later.
As for the Central Asian countries, their leaders are “ready to work with whoever offers the best immediate results, which is China at the moment,” as stated in another leaked document seen by the newspaper.
