Russia Hits Pope Over Comments In Ukraine War

Russia has hit out at comments from the Pope that some minority groups of soldiers have behaved worse than others in the invasion of Ukraine.

The “cruelest” troops are generally Chechens and Buryats, Pope Francis told a US magazine.

He also labelled the Holodomor famine caused by the Kremlin in Ukraine in the 1930s a genocide.

Chechens, an ethnic group originating in Chechnya, in the south-west of Russia, are mostly Muslim.

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Buryats, a mongol ethnic group indigenous to Buryatia, in eastern Siberia, traditionally follow Buddhist and Shamanic belief systems.

Russia contains many republics with distinct ethnic and religious groups.

Russia called the remarks a “perversion”, and said national groups were “one family”.