Ukrainian Ambassador Outraged after Pope Laments Death of ‘Innocent’ Russian Ultra-Nationalist Daria Dugina

Pope Francis called Daria Dugina, the daughter of an ultra-nationalist Russian philosopher who applauded the war on Ukraine, an “innocent” victim of the war on Wednesday, eliciting criticism from Ukraine’s ambassador to the Vatican.

“The madness of war,” Francis said at the conclusion of the General Audience. “I think of that poor girl blown up by a bomb under her car seat in Moscow. The innocent pay for war, the innocent! Let us think about this reality and say to each other: war is madness.”

Twenty-nine-year-old Dugina was killed Saturday after a bomb, placed under her car, detonated while she was driving.

Andrii Yurash, Ukraine’s ambassador to the Vatican, said he was “disappointed” with the pope’s comments. Yurash claimed Dugina was a Russian imperialist killed by Russians, but is now being hailed as being on a “shield of war.”

You “can’t speak in the same categories about aggressor and victim, rapist and raped,” Yurash said.

Dugina, a journalist and commentator on Russian state TV, has been a fierce supporter of Russia’s war in Ukraine. She claimed that the Bucha massacre, in which hundreds of Ukrainians were reportedly killed outside of Kyiv by Russian forces and were buried in mass graves, was fake and a scheme carried out by Western media. She said the name “Bucha” was chosen strategically by the media because of its proximity to “butcher.”

Dugina’s father, Aleksandr Dugin, a philosopher who supports the creation of a new Russian empire and the invasion of Ukraine, blamed Ukrainians for detonating the car bomb, saying Russia needs to win the war as revenge for his daughter’s death.

Russian authorities launched a murder investigation into her death, but have blamed the Ukrainian secret services, claiming a woman tracked Dugina’s movements for a month before placing the bomb and fleeing to Estonia.

The Ukrainian government has denied responsibility, and on Sunday, a former member of Russia’s Duma, Ilya Ponomarev, said the anti-Putin organization National Republican Army was responsible.