MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Bolsonaro’s exit via Argentina further strains relations between Milei and Lula

Presidential spokesman Adrián Ravier said the government had “taken note of the result” of the Brazilian election but ruled out an official statement

Brazilian Senator Flávio Bolsonaro’s transit through Argentina, after he left Brazil despite a court ban and flew to Miami from Puerto Iguazú following his election defeat, has opened a new front in the strained relationship between the governments of Javier Milei and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, while the Casa Rosada maintains its refusal to congratulate the Brazilian president on his re-election.

Argentina’s National Migration Directorate confirmed that Bolsonaro, his wife and two daughters entered the country via the Tancredo Neves international bridge in Misiones province at 10.50 p.m. on Tuesday, with valid documents and “without any legal impediment”. About 40 minutes later they boarded a private plane belonging to Argentine company Baires Fly, which stopped in Guayaquil before reaching Miami. Brazilian Supreme Court Judge Alexandre de Moraes had ordered the senator to surrender his passports and barred him from leaving the country as part of an investigation into alleged money laundering. Bolsonaro will lose his parliamentary immunity in January when his term ends.

Presidential spokesman Adrián Ravier said the government had “taken note of the result” of the Brazilian election but ruled out an official statement, arguing that Lula did not congratulate Milei when he was elected in 2023. According to the newspaper Ámbito, Lula congratulated “the elected authorities” at the time, without naming Milei.

Bolsonaro’s departure fuelled suspicion in Argentina. According to La Nación, presidential adviser Santiago Caputo was in Misiones when the plane took off; the government has not commented on that report. Sources in the Misiones provincial government distanced themselves and said that if there had been an irregular operation by the migration agency or the Airport Security Police, it was up to the national government to explain. Opposition lawmakers filed a formal request for information in the Chamber of Deputies. In the letter he released from Miami, Bolsonaro thanked Milei for “his courage, his sense of justice and legality”, without specifying what he meant.

Bilateral relations are at one of their lowest points. Milei backed Bolsonaro during the campaign and called Lula a “thief” and a “jailbird”, prompting Brazil to recall its ambassador in Buenos Aires for consultations in July. Brazil is Argentina’s main trading partner.

The episode coincided with another Argentine government decision pointing in the opposite direction: the ruling party amended the sovereignty defence bill to narrow sanctions on companies linked to hydrocarbon exploitation in the Falklands, following objections raised by the United States.