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Pope Says Ukraine War Fueled Not Just by ‘Russian Empire’

Pope Francis smiles at the end of his weekly general audience in St. Peter's Square at The Vatican, Wednesday, March 8, 2023. (AP)
Pope Francis smiles at the end of his weekly general audience in St. Peter's Square at The Vatican, Wednesday, March 8, 2023. (AP)
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Pope Says Ukraine War Fueled Not Just by ‘Russian Empire’

Pope Francis smiles at the end of his weekly general audience in St. Peter's Square at The Vatican, Wednesday, March 8, 2023. (AP)
Pope Francis smiles at the end of his weekly general audience in St. Peter's Square at The Vatican, Wednesday, March 8, 2023. (AP)

The war in Ukraine is driven by the interests of several "empires" and not just of Russia's, Pope Francis said in an interview published on Friday.

Francis said the conflict was fueled by "imperial interests, not just of the Russian empire, but of empires from elsewhere".

He expressed a readiness to talk to Russian President Vladimir Putin to call for peace.

The pontiff was speaking to Italian Swiss television RSI, in an interview due to be broadcast on Sunday. Extracts were published on Friday by Italian dailies La Repubblica, La Stampa and Corriere della Sera.

Francis, who is 86 and marks the 10th anniversary of his election on March 13, also said he would resign if he got too tired and lost the capacity to govern the Roman Catholic Church.

Last month, he had said that papal resignations should happen in only exceptional circumstances.

His predecessor Benedict XVI, who died on Dec. 31 aged 95, became the first pontiff to resign in about 600 years when he stepped down in 2013.

Asked what would lead him to make the same decision to quit, Francis said: "A tiredness that doesn't make you see things clearly. A lack of clarity, of knowing how to evaluate situations".

Francis said he was "a bit ashamed" to use a wheelchair due to a knee ailment.

"I am old. I have less physical resistance, the knee (problem) was a physical humiliation, even if the recovery is going well now," he said.

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Lavrov: Russia Will Abandon its Unilateral Missile Moratorium

FILED - 06 February 2023, Iraq, Baghdad: Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov speaks during a press conference. Photo: Ameer Al-Mohammedawi/dpa
FILED - 06 February 2023, Iraq, Baghdad: Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov speaks during a press conference. Photo: Ameer Al-Mohammedawi/dpa
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Lavrov: Russia Will Abandon its Unilateral Missile Moratorium

FILED - 06 February 2023, Iraq, Baghdad: Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov speaks during a press conference. Photo: Ameer Al-Mohammedawi/dpa
FILED - 06 February 2023, Iraq, Baghdad: Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov speaks during a press conference. Photo: Ameer Al-Mohammedawi/dpa

Russia will scrap a moratorium on the deployment of intermediate and shorter range nuclear-capable missiles because the United States has deployed such weapons in various regions around the world, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Sunday.
Russia's move, long signaled, will kill off all that remains from one of the most significant arms control treaties of the Cold War, amid fears that the world's two biggest nuclear powers could be entering a new arms race together with China, Reuters reported.
Russia and the United States, who both admit their relations are worse than at any time since the depths of the Cold War, have both expressed regret about the disintegration of the tangle of arms control treaties
which sought to slow the arms race and reduce the risk of nuclear war.
Asked by state news agency RIA if Russia could withdraw from the
New START treaty before its expiry in February 2026, Lavrov said that there were currently "no conditions" for a strategic dialogue with Washington.
"Today it is clear that, for example, our moratorium on the deployment of short- and intermediate-range missiles is no longer practically viable and will have to be abandoned," Lavrov said.
"The US has arrogantly ignored the warnings of Russia and China and in practice has moved on to the deployment of weapons of this class in various regions of the world."
The Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, signed by Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan in 1987, marked the first time the superpowers had agreed to reduce their nuclear arsenals and eliminated a whole category of nuclear weapons.
The United States under former President Donald Trump formally withdrew
from the INF Treaty in 2019 after saying that Moscow was violating the accord, an accusation the Kremlin repeatedly denied and dismissed as a pretext.
Russia then imposed a moratorium on its own development of missiles previously banned by the INF treaty - ground-based ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges of 500 km to 5,500 km (310 miles to 3,417 miles).
Trump in 2018 said he wanted to terminate the INF Treaty because of what he said were years of Russian violations and his concerns about China’s intermediate-range missile arsenal.
The United States publicly blamed Russia's development of the 9M729 ground-launched cruise missile, known in NATO as the SSC-8, as the reason for it leaving the INF Treaty.
In his moratorium proposal, Putin suggested Russia could agree not to deploy the missiles in its Baltic coast exclave of Kaliningrad. Since leaving the pact, the United States has tested missiles with a similar profile.
Russia fired a new intermediate-range hypersonic ballistic missile known as "Oreshnik", or Hazel Tree, at Ukraine on Nov. 21 in what Putin said was a direct response to strikes on Russia by Ukrainian forces with US and British missiles.