Ukraine: innocents paying, war madness says pope at audience

(ANSA) - ROME, AUG 24 - Pope Francis said at the end of his weekly general audience in the Vatican Wednesday that "so many innocent people are paying for the madness, madness on all sides, because war is madness," referring to Ukraine.
    Francis cited the murder last Saturday of Darya Dugina, the activist daughter of Kremlin ideologue Aleksandr Dugin, in a bombing meant to kill him.
    "I'm thinking of a poor girl blown up by a bomb under the seat of the car in Moscow," the pontiff said.
    "The innocent ones are paying for the war".
    Darya Dugina, also known under the pen name Daria Platonova, was a Russian journalist and political activist.
    She was the daughter of Aleksandr Dugin, a far-right political philosopher, whose political views and support for Vladimir Putin she shared.
    She was killed on August 20 in a car bombing on the outskirts of Moscow.
    The Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) claimed that Ukrainian special services were behind the killing, alleging that they hired a contractor, a Ukrainian national, Natalia Vovk, who escaped to Estonia after the explosion.
    The Ukrainian government denied any involvement, with Ukrainian presidential advisor Mykhailo Podolyak stating that "we are not a criminal state like the Russian Federation, much less a terrorist one", and later blaming the killing on infighting between Russian security agencies.
    Estonia rejected the claim that Dugina's alleged killer had fled to Estonia. (ANSA).