THE SUNDAY GLEANER, MARCH 6, 2022 | NEWS B9 ROME (AP): THE HEAD of the Polish bishops’ conference has done what Pope Francis has so far avoided doing: He publicly condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and urged the head of the Russian Orthodox Church to use his influence with Vladimir Putin to demand an end to the war and for Russian soldiers to stand down. “The time will come to settle these crimes, including before the international courts,” Archbishop Stanislaw Gądecki warned in his March 2 letter to Patriarch Kirill. “However, even if someone manages to avoid this human justice, there is a tribunal that cannot be avoided.” Gądecki’s tone was significant because it contrasted sharply with the comparative neutrality of the Vatican and Francis to date. The Holy See has called for peace, humanitarian corridors, a cease-fire and a return to negotiations, and even offered itself as a mediator. But Francis has yet to publicly condemn Russia by name for its invasion or publicly appeal to Kirill, and the Vatican offered no comment on the Russian strike on Europe’s largest nuclear plant that sparked a fire Friday. For a pope who has declared the mere possession of nuclear weapons immoral and cautioned against using atomic energy because of the environmental threat posed by radiation leaks, the silence was even more notable. The Vatican has a tradition of quiet diplomacy, believing that it can facilitate dialogue better if it doesn’t take sides or publicly call out aggressors. It has long used that argument to defend Pope Pius XII, theWorldWar II-era pope criticized by some Jewish groups for not speaking out enough against the Holocaust. The Vatican says quiet diplomacy helped save lives then, and it continued that tradition in its Cold War Ostpolitik policy of behind-the-scenes diplomacy. UNPRECEDENTED STEP Francis took an unprecedented step last week when he went to the Russian Embassy to the Holy See to meet with the ambassador. But the only thing the Vatican said about the meeting was that Francis went to “express his concern about the war.” He also spoke by phone with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The Vatican secretary of state, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, took a similarly unusual step this week when, in an interview with four Italian newspapers, he actually named Russia in saying the war had been “unleashed by Russia against Ukraine.” In the case of Ukraine, which counts a few million Catholics among its majority Orthodox population, Francis is not shy about his hopes to improve relations with the Russian Orthodox Church and its influential leader, Kirill. As recently as December, when fears of a Russian invasion were already tangible, Francis expressed hope for a second meeting with Kirill following their historic encounter in 2016, the first between a pope and Russian patriarch in a millennium. “A meeting with Patriarch Kirill is not far from the horizon,” Francis told reporters en route home from Greece. “I am always available, I am also willing to go to Moscow: to talk to a brother, there is no need for protocols. A brother is a brother before all protocols.” Francis’ ambassador to Russia, Archbishop Giovanni D’Agnello, met Thursday with Kirill at the patriarch’s residence in the Danilov Monastery in Moscow. Kirill’s office said the patriarch recalled the “new page in history” opened by the 2016 meeting, expressed appreciation for the “moderate and wise position” of the Holy See in resisting being drawn into the conflict and insisted churches can only be peacemakers. The Vatican didn’t report the meeting and its spokesman didn’t respond when asked for comment. One of Franc i s ’ top communications advisers, the Rev. Antonio Spadaro, however, noted Kirill is “facing a great challenge” to weigh the now-growing list of Orthodox priests, metropolitans and ordinary Ukrainian faithful who are begging him to raise his voice against Putin and change position. In an essay published by the Italian news agency Adnkronos, Spadaro didn’t count Francis among them, though he quoted the pope as saying recently that it was “very sad” that Christians were making war. That moderate tone was echoed this week when the Holy See’s ambassador to the United Nations stressed the need for humanitarian corridors in Ukraine to allow refugees out and humanitarian aid in. He didn’t identify Russia as the reason they were needed, according to the Vatican summary of his remarks. DAILY DENUNCIATIONS The Holy See’s foreign minister, Archbishop Paul Gallagher, met Wednesday with his Italian counterpart, Luigi Di Maio. The Italian foreign ministry said Di Maio “repeated Italy’s firm condemnation of the Russian aggression to the detriment of Ukraine and the commitment to continue on the path of effective and incisive sanctions against the government of the Russian Federation,” while helping Ukraine in the “humanitarian, economic and defence areas.” The Vatican, which is sending medical supplies to Ukraine, said nothing after the meeting. Such silence has not been shared by the head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, who has been emphatic in his daily denunciations of the Russian invasion. Nor has it been shared by Polish bishops, who are now helping to mobilize the reception of tens of thousands of Ukrainian refugees who have crossed the border. “I ask you, Brother, to appeal to Vladimir Putin to stop the senseless warfare against the Ukrainian people,” Polish Bishop Gadecki said in his letter to Kirill. “I ask you in the most humble way to call for the withdrawal of the Russian troops from the sovereign state that is Ukraine.” “I also ask you to appeal to Russian soldiers not to take part in this unjust war, to refuse to carry out orders which, as we have already seen, lead to many war crimes,” he added. “Refusing to follow orders in such a situation is a moral obligation.” Local churches shun Vatican’s moderate stance on Russia AP Pope Francis (left) and Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill exchange a joint declaration on religious unity in Havana, Cuba, on February 12, 2016. The head of the Polish bishops’ conference had done what Pope Francis has so far avoided doing by publicly condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Archbishop Stanislaw Gadecki also publicly urged the head of the Russian Orthodox Church to use his influence on Vladimir Putin to demand an end to the war and for Russian soldiers to stand down. “The time will come to settle these crimes, including before the international courts,” Gadecki warned in his March 2 letter to Patriarch Kirill. BELGRADE (AP): WELL BEFORE Russian tanks and troops rolled into Ukraine, Vladimir Putin was using the bloody break-up of Yugoslavia in the 1990s to ostensibly offer justification for the invasion of a sovereign European country. The Russian president has been particularly focused on NATO’s bombardment of Serbia in 1999 and the West’s acceptance of Kosovo’s declaration of independence in 2008. He claims both created an illegal precedent that shattered international law and order, apparently giving him an excuse to invade Ukraine. Putin’s arguments, repeated several times since Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, appear to follow this line: If different ex-Yugoslav republics and the former Serbian province of Kosovo could become independent with Western backing and wars, why can’t Ukraine’s strategic Black Sea peninsula and the rebel-controlled, majority Russian areas in the east of the country split from their mother nations – with Russian help? With strong US support, ethnic Albaniandominated Kosovo seceded over Serbia’s strong objections. Russia, a historic ally of the Serbs, argued then that this set a precedent that could trigger a series of statehood claims elsewhere in the world. In July 2010, UN’s highest court ruled that Kosovo’s declaration of independence was legal but did not outright endorse Kosovo’s claim to statehood. There are many differences between the Russian attack on Ukraine, seen in the West as one of the darkest moments for Europe since World War II, and the wars in the Balkans that left more than 120,000 people dead and millions homeless. There are also some similarities. WHAT ARE THE MAIN DIFFERENCES? NATO didn’t occupy Kosovo after driving Serbian forces out of the former Serbian province, but sent in peacekeepers. Russian troops, meanwhile, took control of Crimea even before its referendum to join Russia was held. NATO intervened in Kosovo only after significant evidence of Serbian abuses against ethnic Albanians, including mass killings and deportations. Russian forces intervened in Ukraine with no major abuses or violence reported against ethnic Russians. Kosovars declared independence but did not join their ethnic brethren in neighbouring Albania in a single state. Crimea, which has a majority Russian population, signed a deal to join Russia two days after the referendum which was deemed flawed and undemocratic by the West. WHAT ARE THE MAIN SIMILARITIES? Both interventions started with false claims that ethnic minorities are being persecuted in neighbouring countries. The Serb-led military unleashed a heavy barrage of artillery against towns and villages in Croatia in 1991, something similar to the initial attacks by Russian forces against Ukraine. Just as Croats, Bosnians and Kosovo Albanians feared Serbian repression during the autocratic rule of late Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic, ethnic Russians feared Ukrainian nationalists. WHAT DID PUTIN SAY? “(German Chancellor Olaf Scholz) has just said that the people of his generation – and I certainly belong to that generation myself – find it difficult to imagine some war in Europe,” Putin said following talks with Scholz in Moscow on November 15. “But all of us were witnesses to the war in Europe that NATO unleashed against Yugoslavia,” Putin said. He recalled that it was a major military operation involving bombing strikes against a European capital, Belgrade. “It did happen. Without any sanctions by the U.N. Security Council. It is a very sad example, but it is a hard fact,” Putin said. He has argued that by intervening in Kosovo, the West created a precedent with long-standing consequences. WHAT IS THE WEST’S TAKE ON THAT? At the press conference with Putin, Scholz hit back at the Russian president’s arguments over NATO’s actions in Kosovo, saying this was done to prevent genocide, referring to the persecution of Kosovo’s majority ethnicAlbanians by Serbian forces. Western leaders have repeatedly rejected Putin’s arguments, saying Kosovo was a unique case due to the large number of victims during the Balkan wars amid the violent breakup of Yugoslavia. Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel had insisted that Putin’s analogies between the West’s actions in Kosovo and Russia’s intervention in Crimea are “shameful.” WHAT COULD BE THE CONSEQUENCES? There are fears that the pro-Russian Serbian leadership could try to use the international attention focused on Ukraine to further destabilize its neighbours, particularly Bosnia where minority Serbs have been threatening to join Serbia. European Union peacekeepers in Bosnia have announced the deployment of some 500 additional troops, citing “the deterioration of the security internationally (which) has the potential to spread instability” to the region. Kosovo’s leadership fears Serbia could be encouraged by Russia to try to intervene in its former province to stop the alleged harassment of minority Serbs. Kosovo has asked NATO for a fast track to membership in the wake of the Ukrainian crisis, something neither Serbia nor Russia would likely accept peacefully. Kosovo officials have rejected Putin’s parallels between the NATO intervention in Kosovo and his invasion of Ukraine as “totally baseless and ridiculous.” Putin’s Balkan narrative argument for Ukraine war AP Russian soldiers drive their military armoured vehicles through the Serbian village of Simanovci , 9 miles (15 kms) west of the Serbian capital Belgrade, on June 11, 1999. Well before Russian tanks and troops rolled into Ukraine, Vladimir Putin was using the bloody break-up of Yugoslavia in the 1990s to ostensibly offer justification for the invasion of a sovereign European country. The Russian president has been particularly focused on NATO’s bombardment of Serbia in 1999 and the West’s acceptance of Kosovo’s declaration of independence in 2008. He claims both created an illegal precedent that shattered international law and order, apparently giving him an excuse to invade Ukraine. n SERBIA n ITALY F ATURE
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