Last May, before being newly re-elected as president of Brazil, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva claimed that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, bear equal responsibility for the war in Ukraine.
Yet whether the refusal to pick sides comes from Brazil, South Africa or India, claiming to be “neutral” on Russia’s war of aggression is untenable.
The same is true of individuals. If a passerby saw a man relentlessly beating a child on a street corner, we would expect the witness to try to stop it. Neutrality is out of the question. On the contrary, we would deplore the moral turpitude of inaction.