Pope Francis has said Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine was “perhaps provoked in some way” as he recalled a pre-war conversation in which he was warned that NATO was “barking. at the gates of Russia “.
In an interview with the Jesuit magazine La Civiltà Cattolica last month and published on Tuesday, the pontiff condemned the “ferocity and cruelty of Russian troops” while warning against what he said was a fairy tale perception. of conflict as good versus evil.
“We have to move away from the usual pattern of Little Red Riding Hood, in which Little Red Riding Hood was good and the wolf was bad,” he said. “Something global is emerging and the elements are very intertwined.”
Francesc added that a couple of months before the war he met a head of state, whom he did not identify but described as “a wise man who speaks little, a very wise man in fact … He told me that I was very worried about how NATO was moving, and I asked him why, and he said, “They are barking at the gates of Russia. ‘”.
He added: “We don’t see all the drama unfolding behind this war, which may or may not have been somehow provoked or prevented.”
Shortly before the invasion, Vladimir Putin had demanded that NATO rule out allowing Ukraine, which borders Russia, to join the military alliance.
The pope said he was not “pro-Putin” and that it would be “simplistic and wrong to say such a thing”. He also said that Russia had “miscalculated” the war. “It’s also true that the Russians thought it would all be over in a week. They came across a brave people, a people who are struggling to survive and have a history of struggle.”
On Tuesday morning, the pontiff posted a message saying the invasion of Ukraine was a violation of a country’s right to self-determination.
“The war in Ukraine has now added to the regional wars that for years have resulted in a large number of deaths and destruction,” he said in a message for World Catholic Church World Poor Day. in November. “But here the situation is even more complex by the direct intervention of a ‘superpower’ intended to impose its own will in violation of the principle of self-determination of peoples.”
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Meanwhile, he told La Civiltà Cattolica that he hoped to meet with Russian Orthodox patriarch Kirill, a close ally of Putin’s supporter of the Ukrainian war, at an interfaith event in Kazakhstan in September.
Kirill rebuked Francis after the pontiff urged him not to become the Kremlin’s “altarpiece” in an interview with the Corriere della Sera newspaper. Kirill accused the pope of choosing an “incorrect tone” to convey his message, adding that such remarks would undermine the dialogue between the two churches.
The couple were due to meet in Jerusalem in June, but the trip was canceled due to the war.