Russia issues formal protest to Vatican after Pope calls out ‘cruelty’ of Ukraine invasion

Russia has filed a formal protest to the Vatican after Pope Francis condemned the “cruelty” of Moscow’s forces in the invasion of Ukraine.

“I expressed indignation at such insinuations,” Russia’s ambassador to the Vatican, Aleksandra Avdeyev, told state-run news agency RIA Novosti on Monday after his visit to the leadership of the city state’s diplomatic service.

Francis had told the Jesuit magazine America in an interview: “When I speak about Ukraine, I speak about the cruelty because I have much information about the cruelty of the troops that come in.

“Generally, the cruellest are perhaps those who are of Russia but are not of the Russian tradition, such as the Chechens, the Buryatia and so on. Certainly, the one who invades is the Russian state. This is very clear.”

This is not the first time Francis has criticised Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Earlier last week he linked the suffering of Ukrainians now to the 1930s “genocide artificially caused by Stalin”, when the Soviet leader was blamed for creating a man-made famine in the country that is believed to have killed more than 3 million people.

Francis’ comparison of the Ukrainian civilians of today to those killed by starvation 90 years ago, his willingness to call it a “genocide” and to squarely blame Josef Stalin, was seen as a marked escalation in papal rhetoric against Russia.

As of this year, only 17 countries have officially recognised the famine, known as the Holodomor, according to the Holodomor Museum in Kyiv.

In comments at the end of his weekly Wednesday general audience, the Pope renewed calls for prayers for the “terrible suffering for the dear and martyred Ukrainian people”.

Francis has repeatedly called for peace and an end to the war, has sent humanitarian aid to Ukraine and has regularly called for prayers for the “martyred” Ukrainian people.

He has, however, generally not assigned blame or even named Russia or president Vladimir Putin. He has also echoed the Kremlin’s complaints that Nato was “barking at its door” in its eastern expansion.

The Vatican has a tradition of not calling out aggressors, believing behind-the-scenes diplomacy to be more effective than public denunciation. The Holy See is also eager to maintain relations with the Russian Orthodox Church, which has strongly backed the Kremlin in the war.

Additional reporting by agencies