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.
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