Russia protests at Pope’s comments as Vatican seeks to mediate
Russia has lodged a formal protest with the Vatican over Pope Francis’s latest condemnation of atrocities in Ukraine, in which the pontiff blamed most of the cruelty on Chechens and other minorities in an apparent effort to spare ethnic Russian troops from criticism.
The Kremlin’s ambassador to the Holy See, Alexander Avdeev, told the RIA Novosti agency that he met a Vatican official on Monday to express his “indignation” over Francis’s comments, which were contained in an interview with the Jesuit magazine America.
