Kremlin Says Vatican Is Not A ‘Neutral’ Place For Peace Talks

After last week’s Istanbul talks between Russian and Ukrainian delegations, which was a first since early 2022, Western leaders have been floating the Vatican as a likely venue for future rounds of peace talks.

This is after Pope Leo, the first American-born pontiff, offered for talks to be hosted at the Vatican, which could act as a mediator. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said days ago that Pope Leo XIV expressed his willingness to host the next round of talks.

The Vatican is being presented as a neutral place, after as we’ve highlighted before the new Pontiff is attempting to initiate a peace blitz regarding global hotspots, from Gaza to Ukraine.

“Finding in the Holy Father confirmation of the readiness to host the next talks between the parties in the Vatican, the prime minister expressed deep gratitude to Pope Leo XIV for his unceasing commitment to peace,” an Italian government’s statement reads.

But the Kremlin objects to the assumption that the Vatican is some kind of purely neutral place, ready to respect both warring sides’ interests.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, speaking at the Diplomatic Academy in Moscow on Friday, poured cold water on hopes of Vatican-hosted talks.

“Many people are fantasizing about when and where [the meeting] will take place. We don’t have any ideas right now,” the foreign minister said. “But imagine the Vatican as a venue for negotiations. It would be a bit inelegant for Orthodox countries to use a Catholic platform to discuss issues on how to remove the root causes [of the war in Ukraine],” Lavrov added.

“I do not think it would suit the Vatican itself to host delegations from two Orthodox countries in these circumstances,” he said. 

It could be that Moscow has carefully looked at what Leo said while he was still a Cardinal:

After being elected, Pope Leo XIV, the first American to lead the Catholic Church, has pledged to personally “make every effort so that this peace may prevail.”

In his first Sunday address on May 11, the pope called for an “authentic and lasting peace” in Ukraine, adding that he carries in his heart the “suffering of the beloved people of Ukraine.”

Previously, while serving as the bishop of Chiclayo in Peru, Leo XIV spoke out against Russia’s continued war against Ukraine.

While politics including the historic trend of NATO expansion are driving the war, it has bled over into church affairs. Russia is outraged over the Zelensky government persecuting the Ukrainian Orthodox Church for maintaining spiritual communion with the Russian Orthodox Church.

There have been repeat instances of government authorities seizing Ukrainian Orthodox churches and monasteries, and local Catholic clergy have not objected to this alarming trend.

The Vatican also has an interest in protecting its minority Ukrainian ‘Greek-Catholic’ Church, which is concentrated in Western Ukraine, especially in and near Lviv.