Italian Cardinal Matteo Zuppi was scheduled to meet with a Kremlin foreign policy adviser during the peace mission he is making to Moscow on Pope Francis’s behalf, the Kremlin said.
Dmitry Peskov, Kremlin spokesperson, told journalists on 28th June that the cardinal would meet with Yuri Ushakov, a foreign policy adviser to Russian President Vladimir Putin and former Russian ambassador to the United States, “per instructions” from the president, according to TASS, the Russian state news agency.
Cardinal Zuppi and Ushakov were expected to “discuss the situation around the Ukrainian conflict and, of course, the possible ways of a political and diplomatic settlement,” Peskov said. He also noted that Russia “appreciates the Vatican’s efforts and initiatives to find a peaceful solution to the Ukrainian crisis and welcomes the pope’s desire to contribute to ending the armed conflict in Ukraine,” TASS reported.
Cardinal Zuppi, president of the Italian bishops’ conference, arrived in Moscow on 27th June accompanied by an official from the Vatican Secretariat of State and was scheduled to remain in the Russian capital until 29th June.
He is on the second leg of a peace mission that also saw him travel to Kyiv, where he met with Ukrainian officials including President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Picture: Yuri Ushakov, Kremlin foreign policy adviser, left, is pictured alongside Duško Perovi, head of the Republic of Srpska’s representative office in Russia, right, during a meeting at the Kremlin in Moscow on 23rd May 2023. (CNS photo/Alexei Filippov, RIA Novosti/Kremlin)