Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told Italian television RAI that he respects Pope Francis but that Ukraine does not need mediators over reports of a secret Vatican peace plan.
“With all due respect to His Holiness, we don’t need mediators, we need a just peace,” said Zelensky in a special edition of the program Porta a Porta, according to ANSA news agency.
Pope Francis and Zelensky met this Saturday at the Vatican in a meeting that lasted about 40 minutes after discussing matters related to “the humanitarian and political situation in Ukraine caused by the current war,” according to a statement from the Vatican. Vatican.
“We call on the pope, like other leaders, to work for a just peace, but first we must do everything else,” he said, emphasizing that it makes no sense to involve Russia in the dialogue for now.
“You can’t mediate [Vladimir] Putin. No country in the world can do that,” he said of the Russian president.
Zelensky also said he had not spoken to Putin and that a counter-offensive was needed to drive the Russian invaders out of Ukrainian territory.
Today was the first meeting of Pope Francis with the Ukrainian president since the beginning of the war, although the two had already met, because Francis received an audience with Zelensky on February 8, 2020, when they spoke about “the humanitarian situation and the demand of peace” in the context of the conflict in which Ukraine has been involved since 2014.
This new meeting falls within the scope of the Vatican’s peacekeeping mission announced by the pope on the return flight from his recent trip to Hungary, the details of which are not yet known, although a Vatican source has stated to Russian media that the meeting ” was not directly involved” and that Zelensky had requested the meeting with Francisco “just a few days ago”.
Moreover, the meeting takes place at a time when a Ukrainian counter-offensive is expected, with which Kiev wants to recapture a large part of the territory occupied by the Russian army.
For all these reasons, the meeting raised great expectations, according to the Efe agency, as many expected it to be a starting point for difficult and complex negotiations, namely the humanitarian issue.
On April 27, the Pope received the Ukrainian Prime Minister, Denys Shmyhal, who repeated his invitation to visit Ukraine, a trip to which Francis always replied that he would make it if he could also go to Moscow.
Source: DN
