ANKARA

Pope Francis on Wednesday expressed condolences over the death of Russian journalist Darya Dugina, the daughter of Russian thinker Aleksandr Dugin, an ally of President Vladimir Putin, in a car explosion on Saturday.

“I think of that poor girl blown up by a bomb under her car seat in Moscow,” the Pope said, according to Vatican’s official news agency Vatican News.

“The innocent pay for war. The innocent! Let us think about this reality and say to each other: War is madness,” he added.

Russia has held Ukrainian authorities responsible for the killing of Dugina. Ukraine, however, has rejected the accusations.

The pontiff stressed that serious action be taken to restore peace in Ukraine, where Russia launched a war in February.

“Many injured, many Ukrainian children and Russian children have become orphans. The orphanage has no nationality, they have lost their father or mother. Let them be Russians, let them be Ukrainians. I think of so much cruelty to so many innocent people who are paying for madness, madness, madness on all sides, because war is madness,” he said.

Kyiv responded to Pope's remarks, with its ambassador to the Vatican, Andrii Yurash, describing the statements as “disappointing."

"Today's speech of the Pope was disappointing and made me think about many things: you can't talk about the aggressor and the victim, the rapist and the raped in the same categories; how can you call one of the ideologues of Russian imperialism an innocent victim? She was killed by the Russians as a sacrificial victim and is now on the shield war,” he said on Twitter.