A Brazilian deputy from Sao Paulo published a photo on social networks in which he appears surrounded by glass bottles and claims to be in Ukraine making Molotov cocktails to arm the army of that country.
“I never imagined that one day in this life I would make Molotov cocktails for the Ukrainian army,” wrote Arthur do Val, a deputy for the Free Brazil Movement (MBL), in a post Thursday night on Instagram. Do Val appears sitting on the ground, surrounded by dozens of boxes stacked with bottles.
The politician was involved in a controversy on Friday after audios attributed to him were released on social networks in which he says that Ukrainian women “are easy, because they are poor.”
The deputy’s press office could not confirm the veracity of the audios and clarified to AFP that the parliamentarian was on a flight back to Brazil.
The presidential candidate and former judge of the Lava Jato anti-corruption operation, Sergio Moro, a political ally of the MBL, repudiated the “serious statements” on Twitter.
Do Val, a member of the Sao Paulo legislative assembly, traveled to Europe this week with another representative of the MBL, a right-wing political group, to support Ukrainians facing Russia’s military.
“We made a lot of Molotov cocktails, in the unit where we were, more than 75,000 were made,” the deputy said in a video that he said he recorded on the border between Ukraine and Slovakia.
The MBL launched a fundraising campaign on networks and reported having collected 180,000 reais -about 35,000 dollars- that would be used to buy food for Ukraine.
The deputy entered that country on Thursday through the border with Slovakia to deliver the supplies and then left the conflict zone, as published on his networks.
Do Val has questioned the president of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, on his networks, who has avoided criticizing the Russian leader, Vladimir Putin, although the Latin American country supported a UN Security Council resolution “deploring in the strongest terms Russia’s aggression against Ukraine.”
“There is no debate here about what Putin is doing… The Eastern European citizen prefers to face the devil rather than join Russia,” Do Val wrote on Twitter.