ROME — Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba urged the Vatican not to place Ukraine and Russia on the same plane as if both share responsibility for the war.
The Holy See “must not say that if they help with something, they must also be neutral so as not to scare the Russians. We do not accept this,” the minister said in a press conference Saturday.
“Let’s remember that Russia is the aggressor and Ukraine the victim,” he continued. “We cannot be placed on the same level, otherwise the wrong message will be created, as if both were responsible for the war.”
Kuleba also said that the Vatican should stop insisting on the idea of brotherhood. “We are not brothers; this is the story of Cain and Abel. They have violated all of God’s laws in our territory.”
The minister also had strong words for Russian President Vladimir Putin and his remarks feigning a desire for peace.
“If you want peace, don’t send missiles every week to destroy our infrastructure; don’t keep sending soldiers to capture our cities; don’t annex territories that belong to others,” he said.
For his part, Pope Francis has insisted that in the war in Ukraine there are no “good guys” and “bad guys,” which is the stuff of fairy tales.
To understand the Russia-Ukraine war, “we have to get away from the normal pattern of ‘Little Red Riding Hood’: Little Red Riding Hood was good and the wolf was the bad guy. Here there are no metaphysical good guys and bad guys, in the abstract,” the pontiff told the Jesuit journal La Civiltà Cattolica on May 19.