Argentina’s new president backs Ukraine and wants to sever close ties with Russia and China and move the country toward trade with the West

Javier Milei, the new right-wing president of Argentina, previously declared that he would weaken close economic ties with countries such as Russia, China and Brazil, citing disagreement with their governments’ policies, reports News.ro.

Milei also expressed his support for Ukraine in its conflict with Russia and said he sees the United States and Israel as Argentina’s main partners.

The Kremlin said on Monday that it had taken note of Argentina’s President-elect Javier Mila’s statements about Russia, but that it wanted to maintain strong ties with Buenos Aires.

Argentina’s outgoing center-left government maintained close ties with Russia, importing the Russian Sputnik V vaccine against COVID-19 and pushing to join the Moscow-backed BRICS group of nations.

The victory of Mile, a libertarian, opens the door to a sweeping overhaul of economic policies, according to the Wall Street Journal. Milea’s proposals include adopting the US dollar as the national currency, abolishing the central bank, prioritizing trade with capitalist nations like the US over China, and shrinking the outsized state sector.

He is studying to convert to Judaism and counts a rabbi among his advisers in a country that has the largest Jewish community in Latin America.

Milei opposes abortion, has said she would support the creation of a market for buying and selling organs, and does not believe climate change is man-made.

In Argentina, inflation is 143%, more than 40% of the population lives in poverty, and factories have had to stop production due to a lack of dollars to pay for imports. The Argentine crisis is considered by economists to be the worst since 2001.

The Argentine peso has lost about 90 percent of its value against the dollar on the black market, its collapse leaving many Argentines struggling to get by on incomes of about $200-$300 a month.

While declaring that the state should not interfere with private enterprise, Milei called for more pro-capitalist and pro-Western trade policies. It is not clear how he might disengage from China, which is a major buyer of Argentine soybeans, lithium and other products.