The chairman of the regional parliament of the Chechen Republic has said the pope’s statements were exemplary of “primitive reasoning.”
Russia’s Ambassador to the Vatican Alexander Avdeev told reporters on Tuesday that he had protested to the Holy See diplomatic corps against Pope Francis’ Russophobic remark that Russia’s ethnic minority soldiers were “the cruelest” within the military conflict in Ukraine.
“I actually have expressed outrage at such insinuations and noted that nothing can shake the cohesion and unity of the multinational Russian people,” Avdeev said.
In similar comments, Magomed Daudov, the chairman of the regional parliament of the Chechen Republic, Russia’s federal subject, said the pope’s statements were exemplary of “primitive reasoning,” and that not a single case of a war crime had been committed by Chechens and Buryats in Ukraine.
The Pope is afraid of Buryats… https://t.co/g9xM4WxFb5
— Russians With Attitude (@RWApodcast) November 28, 2022
“If he had bothered to take heed to inhabitants of the liberated territories, he would have learned that the Chechen fighters, similar to the Buryats and representatives of a whole lot of other peoples of Russia, have turn into saviors for these people. But no, it’s easier to talk out in keeping with the US agenda. How can a spiritual leader, whose diocese includes representatives of most peoples of the world, allow himself to reason on the national issue in such a primitive way?!” Daudov said on Telegram.
Yesterday, Pope Francis said in an interview with America Magazine that soldiers “who’re of Russia but aren’t of the Russian tradition, resembling the Chechens, the Buryati” have to this point been “the cruelest” since Moscow’s military operation began in Ukraine earlier this 12 months.
Read more: Rights mustn’t be violated, lives of punished mustn’t be taken: Pope