Following Vatican Secretary of State Pietro Parolin’s restatement of the Vatican’s offer to host peace talks, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova responded sharply, writing on her Telegram channel that she and “the Chechen and Buryat brothers” are still waiting for “words of apology from the Vatican,” referring to the Pope’s Nov. 28 comments in which he called the Russian troops from Buryatia and Chechnya “the cruelest” soldiers fighting in Ukraine. Kremlin spokesman Peskov, however, had been very positive about the offer a few weeks ago.
Ukraine has so far rejected all efforts by the Vatican to engage in such talks. Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Dmytro Kuleba told a small group of journalists on Dec. 9 that “the time for this broad mediation hasn’t come yet” and said the blame for that lies with the Russians. The meeting with the journalists, reported by Catholic News Agency, centered on Ukraine-Vatican relations and the Vatican’s peace initiative. Before that, Kuleba had scolded Parolin on Dec. 2 that the Vatican should not be “neutral” in the conflict, and that they are sending “a completely wrong message.”
