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The Biden administration and European allies call President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia a tyrant and a war criminal. But he enjoys a standing invitation to the halls of power in Brazil.<\/p>\n
The president of Brazil says that Ukraine and Russia are both to blame for the war that began with the Russian military\u2019s invasion. And his nation\u2019s purchases of Russian energy and fertilizer have soared, pumping billions of dollars into the Russian economy.<\/p>\n
The views of the president, Luiz In\u00e1cio Lula da Silva, encapsulate the global bind in which the United States and Ukraine find themselves as the war enters its third year.<\/p>\n
When Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, the Biden administration activated a diplomatic offensive that was as important as its scramble to ship weapons to the Ukrainian military. Wielding economic sanctions and calling for a collective defense of international order, the United States sought to punish Russia with economic pain and political exile. The goal was to see companies and countries cut ties with Moscow.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
But two years later, Mr. Putin is not nearly as isolated as U.S. officials had hoped. Russia\u2019s inherent strength, rooted in its vast supplies of oil and natural gas, has powered a financial and political resilience that threatens to outlast Western opposition. In parts of Asia, Africa and South America, his influence is as strong as ever or even growing. And his grip on power at home appears as strong as ever.<\/p>\n
The war has undoubtedly taken a toll on Russia: It has wrecked the country\u2019s standing with much of Europe. The International Criminal Court has issued a warrant for Mr. Putin\u2019s arrest. The United Nations has repeatedly condemned the invasion<\/a>.<\/p>\n And to hear Biden administration officials tell it, Russia has suffered a major strategic failure.<\/p>\n \u201cToday, Russia is more isolated on the world stage than ever,\u201d Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken declared in June. Mr. Putin\u2019s war, he added, \u201chas diminished Russian influence on every continent.\u201d<\/p>\n Beyond North America and Europe, there is evidence to the contrary.<\/p>\n China, India and Brazil are buying Russian oil in record quantities, feasting on the steep discounts Mr. Putin now offers to countries willing to replace his lost European customers. With those growing economic relationships have come strong diplomatic ties, including with some close U.S. partners. Mr. Putin visited Beijing in October and hosted India\u2019s foreign minister in Moscow in late December. A few weeks earlier, Mr. Putin was warmly received in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, where he was greeted with a 21-gun salute and fighter jets overhead trailing smoke in the red, white and blue of Russia\u2019s flag.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Russian influence is also expanding in Africa, according to a new report<\/a> from the Royal United Services Institute, a security research group based in London. When Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, the leader of the Wagner mercenary group, died last summer<\/a>, Russia\u2019s military intelligence service took over Wagner\u2019s extensive operations in Africa and made further inroads with governments that rely on the group for security.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cBy no means is Russia boxed in,\u201d said Michael Kimmage, a Cold War historian at the Catholic University of America who was a State Department official in the Obama administration. \u201cIt\u2019s not boxed in economically, it\u2019s not boxed in diplomatically and it gets its message out on the war.\u201d<\/p>\n To some Russia experts, American and European leaders have not fully reckoned with this reality.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat Western leaders conspicuously haven\u2019t done is level with their publics about the enduring nature of the threat from an emboldened, revisionist Russia,\u201d Eugene Rumer and Andrew S. Weiss of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace wrote in November in an essay for The Wall Street Journal<\/a> accusing the West of \u201cmagical thinking\u201d about Mr. Putin\u2019s plight.<\/p>\n A prime example of the disappointment is Mr. Putin\u2019s welcome mat in Brazil, Latin America\u2019s largest and most globally influential nation.<\/p>\n Mr. Lula has extended an invitation to Mr. Putin to attend a Group of 20 leadership summit in Brazil in November, even though his country is a member of the International Criminal Court and is obliged to enforce the court\u2019s arrest warrant for the Russian leader. (Mr. Lula sidestepped questions in December about whether Mr. Putin would be arrested if he showed up, calling it a \u201cjudicial decision.\u201d)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Brazil\u2019s persistently neutral stance on Russia\u2019s war in Ukraine came up in a meeting on Wednesday in Bras\u00edlia, the nation\u2019s capital, between Mr. Lula and Mr. Blinken. Mr. Lula has called for peace talks, a position that Ukraine has criticized, and has said the United States is fueling the war with its weapons shipments to Kyiv. Mr. Blinken told Mr. Lula that the United States did not think conditions were right for diplomacy now.<\/p>\n Later that day, Mr. Blinken landed in Rio de Janeiro for a meeting of foreign ministers from the Group of 20 nations and heard Brazil\u2019s top diplomat, Mauro Vieira, say, \u201cBrazil does not accept a world in which differences are resolved by using military force.\u201d<\/p>\n Sergey V. Lavrov, Russia\u2019s foreign minister, was present. While Mr. Blinken and a handful of counterparts from allied nations denounced Russia\u2019s war, the other officials followed the Brazilian minister\u2019s lead in voicing neutral sentiments or stayed silent on the conflict.<\/p>\n Last year, Mr. Lavrov attended a similar event in India, was welcomed by Mr. Lula at the presidential residence and visited more than a dozen African nations, including South Africa, Sudan and Kenya.<\/p>\n