Russian fury at Pope comments

RUSSIA has lodged a formal protest with the Vatican over Pope Francis’s latest condemnation of atrocities in Ukraine, in which the pontiff blamed most of the cruelty on Chechens and other minorities in an apparent effort to spare ethnic Russian troops from criticism.

The Kremlin’s ambassador to the Holy See, Alexander Avdeev, said he met a Vatican official to express his “indignation” over Francis’s comments.

The Pope’s apparent distinction between the mostly Muslim Chechens and Buddhist Buryats on the one hand, and ethnic Russian fighters on the other, angered Moscow.