Brazil’s president is touring the Iberian peninsula in an attempt to boost ties with the EU, but his persistent claims that both Russia and Ukraine are responsible for the ongoing war highlight the bloc’s difficulty in winning over the global south.

During his stay in Portugal, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said that Ukraine “does not want to stop” the war and insisted peace talks should begin, even though Moscow continues its missile attacks on civilian targets and Russian troops are still occupying parts of Ukraine.

Lula’s rhetoric on the war, which the US earlier condemned as “parroting Russian and Chinese propaganda”, has underscored the challenge facing the EU and its allies at it struggles to build a global coalition seeking to hold Russia accountable for its invasion of Ukraine, and exposed its lack of political influence over swaths of the non-western world.