Former President Jair Bolsonaro has endorsed his eldest son’s campaign to be Brazil’s next president in the 2026 race.

Far-right Senator Flavio Bolsonaro has reaffirmed his commitment to running in Brazil’s 2026 presidential race, despite criticism that he appeared to be openly haggling over whether to remain a candidate.

On Tuesday, Bolsonaro met with reporters outside federal police headquarters in the capital Brasilia, where his father, former President Jair Bolsonaro, is serving a 27-year sentence for attempting to foment a coup.

The younger Bolsonaro said he conveyed to his father that he would not shrink from the 2026 race.

“I told him this candidacy is irreversible,” Flavio said. “And in his own words, ‘We will not turn back.’ Now it is time to talk to people, so we can have the right people on our side.”

The senator also attempted to clear up the comments that sparked the initial controversy.

On Sunday, Flavio raised eyebrows when he told Brazilian media that he could exit the race — for the right “price”.

“There’s a possibility I won’t go all the way,” Flavio said at the time. “I have a price for that. I will negotiate.”

He declined to name what that price would be, but his comments were widely interpreted to be a reference to his father’s imprisonment.

In September, a panel on Brazil’s Supreme Court convicted Jair of five charges related to his attempts to overturn the 2022 presidential election, including one count of seeking the violent abolition of the democratic rule of law.

Jair lost the 2022 race to current Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, a left-wing leader who has announced he will run for a fourth term in 2026.

In November, the Supreme Court panel ordered Jair to be taken into custody to begin his sentence, after the ex-president admitted to damaging his ankle monitor.

Separately, in 2023, Brazil’s Supreme Electoral Tribunal ruled that Jair should be barred from holding public office for eight years, as a penalty for misusing the presidential office to spread election falsehoods.

Since his detention, Jair has backed his eldest son’s candidacy in the 2026 race. Liberal Party (PL) president Valdemar Costa Neto also confirmed on Friday that Jair’s endorsement meant that Flavio would indeed lead the party’s ticket.

Flavio has since received other right-wing endorsements, including from Sao Paulo Governor Tarcisio de Freitas, who was previously considered a frontrunner to represent the PL.

But Flavio’s comments on Sunday have thrown his nascent candidacy into doubt.

Critics, including from Lula’s Workers Party, have seized upon Flavio’s suggestion of a “price” to question his ethics and commitment.

“No one launches a candidacy one day, and the next day says, ‘Look, I can negotiate,’” Edinho Silva, the president of the Workers Party, told reporters. “It’s not just me. No one would take it seriously.”

But Flavio on Tuesday dismissed the attacks and reaffirmed he would stay in the race, while fighting for his father’s freedom.

“My price is Bolsonaro free and on the ballot,” he said. “In other words, there is no price.”

MOSCOW, Dec 9 (Reuters) – Russia’s top general, Valery Gerasimov, said on Tuesday that Moscow’s forces were advancing along the entire front line in Ukraine and were targeting surrounded Ukrainian troops in the town of Myrnohrad.

In a command post meeting with officers of the Centre Grouping which is fighting in Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region, Gerasimov said President Vladimir Putin had ordered the defeat of Ukrainian forces in Myrnohrad, a town with a pre-war population of some 46,000 people to the east of Pokrovsk.

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Russia had taken control of more than 30% of Myrnohrad’s buildings, Gerasimov said.

Russia, which uses the Soviet-era name of Krasnoarmeysk to refer to neighbouring Pokrovsk, says it has taken the whole of the city and claims to have also encircled Ukrainian forces in Myrnohrad, which Russians call Dimitrov.

Ukraine has repeatedly denied Russian claims that Pokrovsk has fallen and says it forces still hold part of the city and are fighting back in Myrnohrad.

Russia currently controls 19.2% of Ukraine, including Crimea, which it annexed in 2014, Luhansk, more than 80% of Donetsk, about 75% of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, and slivers of the Kharkiv, Sumy, Mykolaiv and Dnipropetrovsk regions.

Ukraine says it is holding its defensive lines and forcing Russia to pay a high price for what it says are relatively modest gains.

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Honduras’ attorney general is calling for the arrest of former President Juan Orlando Hernández, who was recently pardoned by President Donald Trump. 

Johel Antonio Zelaya Alvarez said Monday that he ordered Honduran authorities and asked Interpol to execute a 2023 arrest order against Hernández for alleged fraud and money laundering charges. Hernandez, who in 2024 was sentenced to 45 years for allegedly helping to move tons of cocaine into the U.S., was released from federal prison in the U.S. a week ago.

“We have been lacerated by the tentacles of corruption and by the criminal networks that have deeply marked the life of our country,” Zelaya said, according to a translation of a post he wrote on X.  

Zelaya included a photo of the two-year-old order signed by a Honduras Supreme Court magistrate that says that it must be executed “in the case that the accused is freed by United States authorities.” 

FORMER HONDURAN PRESIDENT RELEASED FROM US PRISON AFTER TRUMP PARDON

Dozens of Honduran officials and politicians were implicated in the so-called Pandora case in which Honduran prosecutors alleged government funds were diverted through a network of nongovernmental organizations to political parties, including Hernández’s 2013 presidential campaign, according to The Associated Press.  

Hernández went from supposed U.S. ally in the war on drugs to the subject of a U.S. extradition request shortly after he left office in 2022, the AP added. He was detained and sent to the U.S. by current President Xiomara Castro of the social democrat LIBRE party. 

A lawyer for Hernández, Renato Stabile, told the AP in an email that, “This is obviously a strictly political move on behalf of the defeated Libre party to try to intimidate President Hernandez as they are being kicked out of power in Honduras. It is shameful and a desperate piece of political theatre and these charges are completely baseless.” 

Hernández was freed after Trump announced he was issuing him a “full and complete pardon” following his conviction of conspiring with drug traffickers to import more than 400 tons of cocaine into the U.S. 

FORMER WORLD LEADER THANKS TRUMP FOR PARDON: ‘YOU CHANGED MY LIFE’

Trump said Hernández was “treated very harshly and unfairly,” implying that his trial was politically motivated or over-prosecuted. 

Hernández was convicted in New York on charges of conspiring to import cocaine into the U.S. and two related weapons offenses after a two-week trial. 

Hernández portrayed himself as a hero of the anti-drug trafficking movement who teamed up with American authorities under three U.S. presidential administrations to reduce drug imports, according to the AP. But the judge said trial evidence proved the opposite and that Hernández employed “considerable acting skills” to make it seem that he was an anti-drug trafficking crusader while he deployed his nation’s police and military, when necessary, to protect the drug trade. 

Hernández later thanked Trump for pardoning him, writing on social media that he was “wrongfully convicted.”

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“My profound gratitude goes to President @realDonaldTrump for having the courage to defend justice at a moment when a weaponized system refused to acknowledge the truth. You reviewed the facts, recognized the injustice, and acted with conviction. You changed my life, sir, and I will never forget it,” Hernández wrote on X. 

Fox News Digital’s Ashley Carnahan, Michael Dorgan, Bradford Betz and The Associated Press contributed to this report.