The 40-minute meeting between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the pope at the Vatican took place in a tense, almost icy atmosphere. This was also confirmed by the images that Vatican News released after the hearing. The mutual gifts also underlined the rather large distance between the host in white and the guest in a black military sweater: Pope Francis gave the Ukrainian president a small sculpture depicting an olive branch, a symbol of peace. Ukraine’s president, on the other hand, presented the pontiff with an icon of Our Lady painted on the perforated remains of a bulletproof vest.
