Ukraine’s ambassador to the Vatican criticized Pope Francis on Wednesday for calling Daria Dugin, the daughter of a prominent Russian ultranationalist killed in an explosion near Moscow, an innocent victim of war, Reuters reports.

It is highly unusual for ambassadors to the Vatican to publicly criticize the Pope.

“Innocents pay for war,” Pope Francis said at a general audience Wednesday, referring to Daria Dugina as “that poor girl who was blown up by a bomb under the car seat in Moscow.”

Ambassador of Ukraine to the Holy See Andriy Yurash wrote on Twitter that the Supreme Pontiff’s statement was “disappointing”.

“How can one of the ideologues of Russian imperialism be remembered as an innocent victim? She was killed by the Russians,” Andriy Yurash said.

Pope Francis called the war “madness”. He said that Ukrainian and Russian children were killed and that “an orphan does not know nationality.”

“You can’t talk in the same terms about the aggressor and the victim, the rapist and the raped,” Andriy Yurash said on his Twitter.

Ukraine and Russia accuse each other of the murder of Daria Dugina

Oleksandr Dugin, father of Daria Dugina, has long advocated the unification of Russian-speaking and other territories into a new Russian empire, which would include Ukraine.

Daria Dugina widely supported her father’s ideas and appeared on state television to support Russia’s actions in Ukraine.

The Federal Security Service of Russia claims that Daria Dugin was killed by an agent of the Ukrainian special services.

The murder of Daria Dugina was “a shooting by Russian special services, Ukraine has nothing to do with it,” said Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, quoted by EFE and DSNews.

Mykhailo Podolyak, adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyi, on Monday again denied any involvement of Ukraine in the murder of the daughter of Kremlin ideologue Oleksandr Dugin.

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