Pope Francis has blasted the “ferocity and cruelty” of Russian troops in Ukraine while praising the “heroism” and “courage” of Ukrainians defending their land, but in an interview he’s also said that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was “perhaps somehow provoked.”

The pope’s comments about the war in a meeting with European editors of Jesuit journals last month are already making waves in Europe. Excerpts of the comments were published Tuesday in Italian dailies La Stampa and Avvenire.

According to the Guardian and the Daily Mail, Pope Francis said that a couple of months before war broke out he met with a head of state, whom he did not name, who was worried that NATO was “barking at the gates of Russia.” That official is said to have told the pontiff, “They don’t understand that the Russians are imperial and can’t have any foreign power getting close to them.”

While sharply criticizing Russia’s invasion, Francis also insisted there weren’t “good guys and bad guys” and that Russia was in some ways provoked by NATO’s expansion eastward.

“We need to move away from the usual Little Red Riding Hood pattern, in that Little Red Riding Hood was good and the wolf was the bad one,” he said. “Something global is emerging and the elements are very much entwined.”

The pope was also adamant that he is no advocate of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin.

“Someone might say at this point: ‘But you are in favor of Putin.’ No, I’m not,” Francis said. “It would be simplistic and wrong to say such a thing. I am simply against reducing complexity to the distinction between good and bad, without thinking about roots and interests, which are very complex. While we see the ferocity, the cruelty of the Russian troops, we must not forget the problems to try to solve them.”

During the interview, Francis confirmed he hopes to meet with the Russian patriarch, Kirill, who has attempted to justify the war, when the two are due to attend an interfaith meeting in Kazakhstan in mid-September.

A planned meeting in June was called off by both sides, Francis said, “so that our dialogue isn’t misunderstood.”

While in Kazakhstan, he said, “I hope to be able to greet him and speak with him a bit as a pastor.”

At the same time, Francis went on at length in praising the courage of Ukrainians and reasserting their right to defend themselves while blasting what he said was the financial interests in the war by weapons manufacturers to “test and sell weapons.”

“It’s true the Russians thought it’d be over in a week. But they miscalculated,” Francis said. “They found a courageous people, a people who are fighting to survive and have a history of fighting.”