Brazil's Lula meets Ukraine's Zelenskiy, discusses peace

(Recasts with Lula-Zelenskiy meeting) Sept 20 (Reuters) - Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva met on Wednesday for more than an hour with his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskiy and discussed ways to achieve a peaceful end to the war in Ukraine.

(Recasts with Lula-Zelenskiy meeting) Sept 20 (Reuters) -

Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva met on Wednesday for more than an hour with his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskiy and discussed ways to achieve a peaceful end to the war in Ukraine. "We had a good conversation about the importance of paths to building," Lula posted on messaging platform X, formerly known as Twitter, after their meeting in New York on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly.

He added that they pledged to maintain an open dialogue between their countries. Earlier, Foreign Minister Mauro Vieira said the meeting between Lula and Zelenskiy had a "cooperative mood," and that they would continue talks to strengthen bilateral ties.

This first get-together between Zelenskiy and Lula, who also met Biden on Wednesday, has been months in the making. The Ukrainian government asked for the meeting after the two men did not meet at the G7 summit in the Japanese city of Hiroshima earlier this year. Lula has advocated the creation of a group of nations to mediate an end to the war between Russia and Ukraine, but in May he stated that both Moscow and Kyiv were to blame for the conflict, angering the United States and European states which back Ukrainian resistance to the Russian invasion.

Last month, the Brazilian leftist leader told reporters neither Zelenskiy nor Russian President Vladimir Putin were ready for peace.