Russia has reacted with outrage to Pope Francis' recent comments about the war in Ukraine.
The spokeswoman for the Foreign Ministry in Moscow said: "It's no longer Russophobia, it's a perversion." The reason was an interview with the Pope published on Monday with the American Jesuit magazine "America Magazine".
Thomas Jansen
Editor in Politics.
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Frederick Smith
Political correspondent for Russia and the CIS in Moscow.
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In it, he said he had "extensive information about the cruelty of the troops that marched in."
In general, "the most cruel of them are perhaps those who are Russians but do not follow the Russian tradition, such as Chechens and Buryats".
Francis had so far avoided clearly naming Russia as an aggressor.
He was heavily criticized for that.
Now the Pope said: "But it is clear that it is the Russian state that is conducting the invasion."
Holodomor historical progenitor
In the interview, Francis also addressed the famine in Ukraine at the beginning of the 1930s.
"I should remind that these days is the anniversary of the Holdomor, Stalin's genocide against the Ukrainians." It was "appropriate to remember it as a historical precursor to the conflict."
The Russian Ambassador to the Holy See said he had protested the Pope's statements, stressing: "Nothing can shake the unity and unity of the multi-ethnic Russian people." The spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry said it was in the 1990s and early this century Russians have been accused of torturing the inhabitants of the Caucasus.
Now it says "that the peoples of the Caucasus are torturing Russians".
She based it on the Kremlin's view that Russians and Ukrainians are one people.
The Chechens mentioned by Pope Francis are at home in the Caucasus, while the Buryats are in Siberia.
However, as a Buryat activist recently complained in an interview with the FAZ, during the war in Ukraine various ethnic groups “with minimal Eastern appearance” are undifferentiatedly referred to as Buryats.