https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2022/11/28/pope-francis-interview-america-244225
Pope Francis has - at times - managed to say some reasonable things about Russia's invasion of Ukraine. But here he puts his foot in his mouth, once again:
"When I speak about Ukraine, I speak about the cruelty because I have much information about the cruelty of the troops that come in. Generally, the cruelest are perhaps those who are of Russia but are not of the Russian tradition, such as the Chechens, the Buryati and so on."
There certainly are notorious examples of atrocities committed by Chechen and other ethnic minority soldiers. But by far the greatest cruelties of the Russian invasion are the mass killings and deportations ordered from on high by Vladimir Putin and other top-level officials - the vast majority of whom are in fact ethnic Russians "of the Russian tradition."
Later in the interview, Francis claims that he does not explicitly blame Putin "Because it is not necessary; it is already known." Sorry, Your Holiness. But it damn well is necessary. If you can't get this very simple thing right, you have no business engaging in moral pontification about the war.
Francis does admit that "Certainly, the one who invades is the Russian state. This is very clear." True enough. The Pope would have done better to stop right there. But if he has to allocate blame for cruelty more specifically, he would do well to remember that the greatest responsibility resides with those at the top.
I should emphasize that it's wrong to assign collective guilt to any ethnic or racial group, whether Chechens, Russians or anyone else. My point is not that ethnic Russians as a group are somehow responsible for the injustices of the war, but that most of people who ARE most responsible are ethnic Russians. While most Russians are not responsible for the wrongs of the war, most of those who are responsible are in fact Russian.