Kyiv's Lula invitation and Putin's occupied-region visit, 18–19 April 2023

What did the diplomatic and military signals of 19 April 2023 amount to? The reports from the preceding day, 18 April 2023, point to two parallel stories: a dispute over how to talk about peace, and a show of presence by Moscow in territory it claimed.

An invitation with a rebuke

On 18 April 2023, the Ukrainian government invited Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to visit Ukraine. In the same breath, it criticised his approach to Russia's invasion. The invitation and the criticism came together, so Kyiv was both offering access and contesting his stance.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, by contrast, welcomed Lula's position on peace efforts. The two governments therefore reacted to the same stance in opposite ways, and the Brazilian president's approach became a point of contention between them.

Putin in the occupied south and east

Also on 18 April 2023, Russian President Vladimir Putin made a rare visit to Russian-occupied parts of Kherson and Luhansk oblasts. He met military commanders in charge of operations there.

The visit concerned regions covered by Russia's declared annexation. On 30 September 2022, Russia unilaterally announced the annexation of areas in and around Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia oblasts. Russia had not fully controlled any of the four oblasts at that time, and it did not control them fully afterwards either. Russian officials said the boundaries would be defined later.

Why the pairing matters

Taken together, the two developments show competing efforts to shape the narrative. Kyiv used public criticism and an open invitation to press a prominent foreign leader on the war, while Moscow welcomed that leader's peace stance and its president appeared among commanders in occupied areas. Both sides were addressing audiences abroad and at home, but the reports from 18 April 2023 record only these actions, not any immediate result of them.