They Tried to Rally South America Behind Ukraine. They Nearly Got Killed.

Héctor Abad Faciolince grew up in what had been one of the vital violent cities on earth. Since Colombia received its independence greater than 200 years in the past, it has weathered political unrest, navy crackdowns and violent drug cartels.

His personal father, who had accused the navy of sponsoring dying squads, was assassinated in 1987 by paramilitary forces that had turned his hometown, Medellín, right into a warfare zone.

But his brush with dying got here half a world away.

At the top of a visit final month that he and two fellow Colombians hoped may support their quixotic quest to construct help in South America for Ukraine’s battle in opposition to Russia, a missile tore by way of a crowded restaurant the place they’d simply raised their glasses for a toast. At least 13 folks have been killed, together with their information, the Ukrainian author Victoria Amelina.

“I could only think: they killed us,” Mr. Abad mentioned. “That was the last thing I could think of.”

Nearly a yr and a half since Russia invaded Ukraine, a lot of South America has largely averted selecting sides within the warfare. Longstanding views {that a} multipolar, less-Western world order is of their finest pursuits have prompted governments to oppose the preventing however reject makes an attempt to isolate Russia diplomatically, impose financial sanctions or provide weapons to Ukraine.

And many common residents, polls recommend, view the warfare as one thing too distant to care about, a proxy warfare between world powers doing what they’ve all the time performed: impose their wills on smaller nations.

Opposition to such widespread apathy put Mr. Abad and two fellow Colombians — Catalina Gómez Ángel, a journalist, and Sergio Jaramillo, a former protection minister who led the federal government’s peace settlement with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia — unwittingly within the line of fireside.

They had attended a literary convention in Kyiv, the place they spoke a few marketing campaign created by Mr. Jaramillo, “¡Aguanta Ucrania!” (“Hang On Ukraine!”), that has collected supportive movies from Latin American politicians, intellectuals and artists, together with the Chilean author Isabel Allende and the Uruguayan songwriter Jorge Drexler. So far, it has attracted a modest following: simply over 4,000 followers on Twitter and Instagram mixed.

But after the convention, Mr. Jaramillo mentioned, the he needed to “take the campaign to the places where Ukrainians suffer most.” Ms. Amelina volunteered to information them by way of villages within the battle-scarred Donbas area to doc tales of Ukrainian troopers and households who had been victims of warfare crimes.

They hoped to inform these tales again house and promote solidarity with Ukraine, the place Mr. Abad mentioned the struggle for sovereignty echoes the struggles of South American nations.

“When one defends certain freedoms of the West and Ukraine, one is also defending those of Colombia,” Mr. Abad mentioned.

They had completed their tour on a heat Tuesday final month in Kramatorsk, about 20 miles from the entrance line and the devastated metropolis of Bakhmut. Ria Lounge, one in all Ms. Amelina’s favourite eating places, was energetic and crowded though native officers had restricted the sale of alcohol within the metropolis, in hopes of protecting folks off the streets. Instead, the companions toasted with nonalcoholic beer and apple juice.

“Victoria looked at my glass and joked: ‘Looks like whisky,’” Mr. Abad mentioned. “She smiled, and I smiled. At that moment, there were no sirens. There was no whistle, nothing. Just something like an explosion that I had never felt in my life.”

Mr. Abad, Ms. Gómez and Mr. Jaramillo sustained minor accidents. But Ms. Amelina, one in all Ukraine’s best-known younger writers, died in a hospital 4 days later. She was 37.

The assault prompted President Gustavo Petro of Colombia to publicly condemn Russia for the primary time because the invasion, and he known as on his nation’s international ministry to “deliver a diplomatic note of protest.”

But three weeks later in Brussels, at a summit of European leaders and their Caribbean and Latin American counterparts, Mr. Petro selected to take a seat on the fence when it got here to discussing the warfare.

He chastised the West with frequent chorus in South America. “No doubt there’s an imperialist invasion of Ukraine. But what would you call what happened in Iraq? Or in Libya? Or in Syria?” he mentioned. “Why does this one cause this reaction and previous ones in this century do not?”

President Gabriel Boric of Chile, one of many few South American leaders to sentence Moscow, urged his counterparts to be extra assertive. “Today it is Ukraine, but tomorrow it could be any one of us,” he mentioned in the course of the summit.

But the summit stalled because the nations couldn’t agree on find out how to deal with the battle. In their joint assertion, they didn’t point out Russia in any respect, limiting their communiqué to expressing “deep concern on the ongoing war against Ukraine.”

Many South American leaders have extra urgent priorities, like financial stagnation and hovering inflation, and concern the potential financial fallout of taking sides. Brazil’s very important agribusiness, for instance, is extremely depending on Russian fertilizers.

Public curiosity has additionally waned. A current Ipsos ballot confirmed that focus paid to the warfare has receded considerably in main Latin American nations, together with Mexico, Argentina and Colombia, in comparison with many different elements of the world. A majority of individuals polled within the area imagine that Ukraine’s issues are none of their enterprise and the survey discovered little help for any sort of intervention.

There can be continued mistrust of the United States, which has a protracted historical past of backing regime adjustments within the area, together with navy dictatorships. It’s a deeply embedded reminiscence that shouldn’t be taken flippantly, mentioned Juan Gabriel Tokatlian, a professor of worldwide relations and the provost of the Universidad Torcuato Di Tella in Buenos Aires.

Latin America’s high considerations, he mentioned, are inequality, poverty and pandemic restoration — and avoiding a return to the times when the continent was caught between competing superpowers.

“Latin America lost development opportunities and experienced the dramatic costs of the Cold War,” he mentioned. “If a similar division happens now, historical memory will count. And, for Latin America, going back to a Cold War is unacceptable.”

But that’s precisely why supporters of Ukraine say it’s essential for Latin America to take an curiosity in Ukraine.

Sergio Guzmán, the director of Colombia Risk Analysis, a political consultancy, mentioned the warfare may reshape the worldwide energy map, and the area dangers being disregarded by making an attempt to take a center path.

“If Latin America wants to have a seat at the table, it needs to get involved,” he mentioned.

While South American leaders have been in Brussels, ¡Aguanta Ucrania! posters had gone up across the metropolis. About two weeks after the missile strike on Kramatorsk, Mr. Abad and Mr. Jaramillo visited the town to advertise their initiative and attend a tribute to Ms. Amelina on the European Parliament together with Ms. Gómez.

Back house in Medellín, Mr. Abad mentioned he’d begun studying the Spanish version of Ms. Amelina’s 2017 novel “Dom’s Dream Kingdom.”

“It’s very entertaining, and you learn a lot of Ukrainian history,” Mr. Abad mentioned. “It’s the story of a family in Lviv, and you learn how complex the Ukrainian identity is, as many spoke Russian and were part of the Soviet Union.”

He mentioned he hoped that Ms. Amelina’s 10-year-old son would come of age in a free and impartial Ukraine.

“That’s what they are fighting for,” he mentioned. “I hope that they will not lose this war. Because if Ukraine loses, we all lose.”