VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – Italian Cardinal Matteo Zuppi, tasked by Pope Francis to carry out a peace mission to try to help end the war in Ukraine, will visit Moscow this week as a follow up to his trip to Kyiv, the Vatican said on Tuesday.
A statement said Zuppi would be in the Russian capital on Wednesday and Thursday.
“The main purpose of the initiative is to encourage gestures of humanity, which can contribute to facilitating a solution to the current tragic situation and find ways to achieve a just peace,” it said.
It was not clear who Zuppi would meet in Moscow. He met religious leaders as well as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on June 6.
If Zuppi, 67, meets Russian President Vladimir Putin, he would be one of the first foreigners to do so since the aborted mutiny against the Russian military over the weekend.
A Vatican source said Zuppi’s trip had been at risk of being called off because of the attempted mutiny and the confusion surrounding it.
(Reporting by Philip Pullella and Alvise Armellini; Editing by Federico Maccioni and Alison Williams)
