Vatican Number Two Says Giving Ukraine Weapons Legitimate, with Conditions

ROME, May 13 (Reuters) - The Vatican's number two said on Friday that supplying weapons to Ukraine to help it defend itself against Russian aggression is morally legitimate under certain conditions, citing the Catholic Church's teaching on "just war".

Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin spoke to reporters on the sidelines of a conference in Rome, as the topic of supplying arms to Kyiv was discussed at a meeting of foreign ministers from the G7 rich nations in Germany.

"There is a right to armed defence in the case of aggression," Parolin said in response to a question about countries sending weapons to Ukraine.

He said the right was enshrined in the Roman Catholic Church Catechism, or book of teachings, under certain conditions.

"Above all (the condition) of proportionality, and then that the response does not produce greater damage than those caused by the aggression. This is in the context of a 'just war,'" Parolin said.

Pope Francis, while he has used terms such as "atrocities," "unjust aggression" and spoken of the sufferings of Ukrainians "defending their land," has so far refrained from labelling the conflict in Ukraine a just war.

He has called for all wars to be banned and has questioned if any conflict can be totally just.

Taking “turning the other cheek” to the extreme seems an odd thing to do.

An aggressor initiating a war based entirely on his own greed or lust cannot be acting justly. That’s why the UN backed the first Gulf War. Nothing about Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait was just. It was part hegemonic, part about debts, and partly about an oil grab.

This isn’t Putin’s first “destabilise, promote separatism, then march in” rodeo. He’s done it before to Chechnya and Georgia.

Because it didn’t deliver a complete surrender this time round he’s authorised: mass transportation of civilians into Russian detention camps; the use of torture and collective punishment; the targeting of schools and hospitals; starvation, and water deprivation, of civilians under siege...

There’s definitely nothing ‘just’ when a war is prosecuted like that. And so we have to look at all the motives cited for the action.

The 2014-2015 period of the civil war in Donbas wasn’t just either, but this is 2022 not 2016. Ukraine had experienced 36 months of measurable de-escalation (even the DPR don’t dispute that) with over a third of the (75) civilian deaths in those three years attributed to leftover mines, vehicle accidents and other misadventure, not to direct action.

And still Putin ordered his troops in, allegedly

1. to end a genocide that had ended three years earlier.

And people, even now, buy it as a ‘just cause’ when it’s clearly a ‘false flag’. Putin cannot evidence it.

“Hey Putin, if there was still a genocide in 2021 and you can prove it, prove it. Surely you have some independently verified statistics that correlate with detailed reports from your guys who definitely were in Donbas even though you officially deny that they were there?”

“Hey Putin, your DPR chums put a graph showing the civilian deaths in their area into the public domain which showed civilian deaths in the conflict plummeting from 2016 to 2019 but they have curiously not posted the numbers for 2019 to 2021 yet. Since the ‘other side’ ie the EU / UN with Red Criss and UNHCR support was only able to identify 75 deaths in three years, we need the DPR numbers. So what are their numbers for that period, and if there aren’t any why not?”

2. NATO expansion in violation of a Soviet era verbal assurance that neither Gorbachev nor Bush ever saw written down (sorry, thirty years of Putin’s stewing butthurt over the Iron Curtain being torn down isn’t a causus belli. But kudos for objecting 20 years after the fact, that’s even more impressive than delivering a false flag 3 years late. Next!)

3. Novorussiya... The real motive. The just cause is a very old map, and the same butthurt in #2. Ask Saddam if that excuse worked for him. Computer says no. 30 years Putin’s known this one has no legs at the UN. Next!

4. Beach front property, mineral resources, oil...

Hmm. See 3.

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