Trump: Vatican offers venue for Russia-Ukraine negotiations

More than three years after Russia's invasion of Ukraine, discussions are intensifying with a view to peace negotiations. On Monday, Presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin spoke on the phone for two hours.

“Russia and Ukraine will immediately start negotiations toward a Ceasefire and, more importantly, an END to the War,” the US president wrote on social media. 

Trump said he had informed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, French President Emmanuel Macron, and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.

The US president concluded his message by assuring that the Vatican “would be very interested in hosting the negotiations. Let the process begin!”

By Tuesday, the Italian press reported that Giorgia Meloni is ready “to facilitate contacts” for talks at the Vatican.

When questioned by I.MEDIA, Matteo Bruni, director of the Holy See Press Office, explained that the Holy See's “availability” was already known in the past and that there was nothing new on the part of the Vatican.

On February 25, 2022, the very day after Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Pope Francis broke protocol and went himself to visit the Russian Embassy to the Holy See in an attempt to influence Russia's position.

Four days later, his Secretary of State, Pietro Parolin, insisted that it is “never too late” to negotiate. The Holy See “is always ready to help the parties take this path,” the Holy See's “number two” reaffirmed. 

In the months that followed, Pope Francis raised the idea of traveling to Moscow and Kiev to try to end the war. He also appointed Cardinal Matteo Zuppi to offer mediation between the two countries.

Cardinal Zuppi — the Archbishop of Bologna and President of the Italian Episcopal Conference — traveled to Kiev, Moscow, Washington, and Beijing for this purpose. At the time, his mission was reportedly limited mainly to humanitarian aspects, such as the repatriation of Ukrainian children deported to Russia. 

The funeral of Pope Francis on April 26 and the election of Leo XIV on May 8 provided opportunities for high-level diplomatic meetings at the Vatican.

During the Argentine pontiff's funeral, President Zelensky met with his US counterpart Donald Trump in St. Peter's Basilica. This was their first direct contact since their altercation two months earlier at the White House.

Last Sunday, the inaugural Mass of Leo XIV's pontificate gave the new pope a chance for a private audience with President Zelensky.

On Monday morning, the Vice President of the United States was received at the Vatican by the head of the Catholic Church. He took the opportunity to invite the American-Peruvian pontiff to the United States. A few hours later, J.D. Vance met with President Volodymyr Zelensky in the gardens of the US ambassador's residence in Italy.

From the very first days of his pontificate, Leo XIV has been very active on the Ukrainian issue. On May 12, he spoke by phone with President Zelensky, who also invited him to visit Ukraine. Two days later, during an audience with the Eastern Catholic Churches, he assured them that “the Holy See is always ready to help bring enemies together, face to face, to talk to one another.”

François Mabille, associate researcher at IRIS and director of the Geopolitical Observatory of Religion, notes a difficulty and ambiguity concerning the principle of mediation offered by the Holy See.

“There’s a distinction between offering a space for impartial mediation and actually mediating,” he explains. Mabille also points out “the difficulty for the Vatican to appear as a neutral space with regards to Moscow, which considers itself to be the Third Rome.”

On Tuesday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed that Moscow was well aware of the Vatican's proposal to host negotiations. "Everyone knows about the Pope’s initiative. The Vatican issued a corresponding statement. Of course, the Russian side appreciates any effort to contribute. However, no specific arrangements have been confirmed regarding the venue for future discussions," he said, according to the Russian news agency Tass.

President Vladimir Putin met Pope Francis three times at the Vatican. The last audience took place in 2019. The early years of Francis' pontificate marked a historic warming of relations between the Moscow Patriarchate and the Catholic Church. On February 12, 2016, nearly a thousand years after the Great Schism of 1054, the Pope met the Orthodox Patriarch of Moscow for the first time during a trip to Cuba.

But the policy of rapprochement was interrupted by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. While the pope and the patriarch were planning to meet in Jerusalem in June 2022, the disagreements generated by the war in Ukraine put a halt to that plan.

“Vladimir Putin visited the Vatican at a time when relations between the Moscow Patriarchate and Rome were warming,” recalls Mabille. To be successful, the diplomatic mediation offered by the Vatican will undoubtedly have to be accompanied by a resumption of relations at the ecumenical level.

The presence of a delegation from the Moscow Patriarchate at Francis' funeral and the inaugural mass for Leo XIV showed that contacts are continuing despite the tensions caused by the war in Ukraine.