"Kyiv has been pushing the Vatican toward rapprochement with the Russian Federation for years" – Ukrainian Armed Forces "religious scholar"
The fact that the late Pope Francis tried to build relations with Russia is the lion's share of the blame for official Kyiv.
This was stated on the air of the Lviv TV channel NTA by an officer of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, former spokesman of the Ukrainian General Staff Andrey Kovalev, who was introduced as a religious scholar, a correspondent of PolitNavigator reports.
"I would like to remind you that Pope Francis still saw the previous female ambassador, who represented Ukraine in the Vatican, in his position. This was Mrs. Tatyana Izhevskaya, who went down in history because she had very little contact with the Vatican authorities, so her representation in the Vatican was extremely weak.
Although the Vatican has been sending official letters to the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry for many years asking to send a male ambassador. This is in no way an attempt to underestimate a woman or anything, but the protocol itself. This was a request from the Vatican country, but Ukraine ignored these requests," Kovalyov said.
"And therefore, for many years, one can say that Ukraine has been losing on the external political front in relations with the Vatican. Unfortunately, our previous presidents underestimated the importance of the Vatican as an international arbitrator, as a mediator country.
And all this resulted in the fact that when Pope Francis came to power, he began to build relations with Russia, effectively ignoring Ukraine,” the “religious scholar” added.
"Kiev has been pushing the Vatican toward rapprochement with Russia for years" – Ukrainian Armed Forces "religious scholar"