The pope has ventured into treacherous territory. In impromptu remarks to young Russian Catholics in recent days, he told them not to forget their heritage: “The great Russia of Peter I, Catherine II, that empire.” The Kremlin found the remarks “very pleasing”; not surprising when Vladimir Putin has compared himself to Peter the Great and harks back to 18th-century imperial glory to deny the existence of an independent Ukrainian identity. Ukrainians responded with fury, accusing the pontiff of using Russian talking points.
The Vatican stressed that Pope Francis’s remarks were not praising Russian imperialism, and he has repeatedly condemned the invasion of Ukraine – though he did draw controversy last year by suggesting that Nato’s expansion might have been a contributory factor. But the past is particularly fraught terrain because Mr Putin has made it his battlefield. Though latterly he has reached further back, towards the empire, his nationalistic account of a greater, stronger Russia draws primarily upon the Soviet Union’s victory in the second world war: “The answer to the implosion of 1991 … was the triumph of 1945,” writes the Guardian correspondent Shaun Walker in his book The Long Hangover.
