“We asked the pope to help them, to be a third party in this war and to let them through the (humanitarian) corridor,” she said. “He told us he was praying for us and doing his best.
The 27-year-old weeping Mrs. Prokopenko, whose husband Denis Prokopenko is the commander of the Azov Regiment, told Francis: “You are our last hope. We hope you can save their lives. Please don’t let them die. Russian captivity is not an option for them. “
After the five-minute meeting, she told reporters: “We asked him to come to Ukraine, to talk to Putin, to tell him ‘Let them go.’ He just said he would pray for us. We hope that this meeting will just give us a chance to save their lives. “
While Francis has said he will do his best, the chances of a petition from the Vatican so far appear slim.
The pope said earlier this month that he had requested a meeting with Vladimir Putin in Moscow to try to negotiate an end to the fighting, but received no response from the Kremlin. He said he would not visit Ukraine until he met with Putin in Moscow.
Although Francis condemned the war as a whole, he was reluctant to shift the blame to the Kremlin.
In an interview with an Italian newspaper this month, he suggested that Putin’s invasion of Ukraine was provoked by “NATO barking at Russia’s gates.”
He told the Corriere della Sera: “I have no way of saying whether his anger was provoked, but I suspect it may have been facilitated by the West’s attitude.”
Asked if the West agrees to supply huge quantities of weapons to Ukraine, he said: “I can’t answer this question, I live too far away, I don’t know if it is right to supply Ukrainian fighters. ”
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