“Never forget the legacy,” Francis said in a video speech on Friday to young Catholics in St. Petersburg. “You are the heirs of Great Russia: Great Russia of saints, rulers, Great Russia of Peter I, Catherine II, that empire.”
The Holy See sought to calm an outcry over comments that some critics said were too close to President Vladimir Putin’s justifications for invading Ukraine.
The 18th-century military commander and lover of Catherine the Great helped conquer Ukraine and looms large in the version of history the Kremlin uses to justify the war.
President Vladimir V. Putin knows that Ukraine’s fate, its access to the sea and its grain exports hinge on Odesa. Without it, the country shrivels to a landlocked rump state.