Pope Francis told an Italian newspaper he had offered to travel to Moscow to meet with President Vladimir Putin to try to end Russia’s war in Ukraine and suggested the invasion might have been provoked by NATO’s eastward expansion.
He added that Kirill “cannot turn into Putin’s altar boy,” a dismissive term used by a top U.S. Ukrainian Greek Catholic archbishop.
Francis has frequently denounced the weapons industry and the announced increases in defense spending by the West in recent weeks. But he has also defended the right of Ukrainians to protect their territory from the Russian invasion, in line with Catholic social doctrine. He told Corriere he felt he was too removed to judge the morality of resupplying the Ukrainian armed forces from the West.
But he also said he was trying to understand why Russia had reacted as it had. Maybe “this barking of NATO at Russia’s door” had prompted it, he was quoted as saying, “An anger that I don’t know if you can say was provoked, but maybe facilitated.” Francis has given a handful of interviews of late to friendly media emphasizing his call for an end to the war and initiatives to provide humanitarian relief to Ukrainians. He has defended his decision to not call out Putin or Russia publicly, saying popes don't do so. But he freely named Putin in his remarks to Corriere, and seemed to equate the carnage in Ukraine with the genocide in Rwanda a quarter-century ago.
“Such brutality, how can you not try to stop it? Twenty-five years ago in Rwanda we saw the same thing,” he was quoted as saying.
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