Cardinal Matteo Zuppi, the papal envoy entrusted with the Holy See's humanitarian track in the Russia-Ukraine war, has concluded a three-day mission to Moscow focused on prisoners of war, displaced children and civilians trapped in the conflict. The visit, which ended on September 30, produced no announced breakthrough — but it kept open one of the few working channels between Kyiv and Moscow, even as the battlefield continues to burn.
According to Russia's Foreign Ministry, Zuppi met Kremlin foreign-policy aide Yuri Ushakov and other Russian officials over three days of talks, and was permitted to visit Ukrainian prisoners of war held in Russia. The ministry said the discussions covered the prospects for a settlement as well as humanitarian issues, including prisoner exchanges and displaced children.
What was on the table
This was Zuppi's third trip to Moscow, following visits in June 2023 and October 2024. The mission was first entrusted to him by Pope Francis and has been expressly confirmed by Pope Leo XIV. Telling TASS ahead of the meetings, Zuppi said his mandate was to support the efforts of both sides to address "the problems related to children, prisoner exchanges, and civilian issues arising from the conflict."
The agenda drew directly on work Zuppi did in Kyiv this past July, when he met Ukrainian authorities and the families of military personnel and civilians detained in Russia. The families asked him to promote a prisoner exchange under an "all-for-all" formula; the estimates presented to him spoke of around 7,000 Ukrainians held in Russia and approximately 4,000 Russians in Ukrainian custody, according to Vatican News. Also on the table was the fate of Russian civilians displaced from the Kursk region — Zuppi told TASS the parties would verify whether all of them have been able to return to their homes. Russia's ambassador to the Holy See, Ivan Soltanovsky, acknowledged that exchanging civilian prisoners is "a new matter" that would first require defining who can be included in that category.
Moscow's version and Kyiv's rebuttal
As with every Russian statement about its conduct in this war, the Foreign Ministry's account of the mission requires careful handling. Moscow claimed Zuppi was "personally able to talk with Ukrainians and see for himself that Russia strictly follows all the relevant humanitarian standards," and said the visit confirmed the "constructive and regular nature" of the Russian-Vatican dialogue.
Kyiv tells a different story — and has for years. Ukrainian officials continue to accuse Russian forces of mistreating detainees and blocking humanitarian corridors, and nothing in a staged, Kremlin-supervised visit disproves that. The same week Zuppi was in Moscow, Russia was launching its largest combined drone-and-missile strike on Kyiv since winter. Staged prison tours do not demonstrate humanitarian standards.
The dispute over the occupied Kherson town of Oleshky illustrates the pattern. Ukrainian officials said Kyiv's military used drones last weekend to deliver food and medicine to civilians there. Russia's Foreign Ministry claimed Ukraine was blocking all attempts to supply the town's residents. Ukrainian officials say the opposite: that Russian forces are preventing residents from leaving.
The Pope's warning over the mission
Zuppi's three days of talks coincided with Pope Leo's most direct appeal yet for Russia and Ukraine to sit down and discuss how to end the four-year war. The pontiff also decried national leaders who, he said, were "beginning to speak about nuclear weapons and wars that are becoming ever more destructive" — a clear rebuke of the nuclear rhetoric Moscow has been escalating around Kaliningrad and elsewhere. The succession of Vatican visits — Zuppi's humanitarian mandate plus Monsignor Paul Richard Gallagher's five-day diplomatic visit to Russia in late August, which included meetings with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov — shows Rome is serious about keeping doors open.
Conclusion
No one should expect a cardinal's shuttle diplomacy to end a war that tanks, drones and sanctions have not. But the channel Zuppi keeps open does one thing that matters: it forces both sides to keep prisoner exchanges, displaced children and trapped civilians on the agenda, even in a week when Moscow preferred the conversation to be about air strikes. Whether that channel survives the winter will depend less on Rome's goodwill than on whether the Kremlin is willing to do anything more than stage-manage it.
Watch our latest video coverage here: https://www.youtube.com/@CapitolInvestigates