Vatican City: Pope Francis has came under criticism for telling Russian youths to remember that they are the heirs of past tsars such as Peter the Great, who President Vladimir Putin has held up as an example to justify the invasion of Ukraine.

Ukraine said the comments, which Francis made on Friday in a live video address to Catholic youths gathered in St Petersburg, were “deeply regrettable”.

Francis read his prepared speech in Spanish but at the end, shifted into impromptu Italian and said: “Don’t forget [your] heredity. You are heirs of the great Russia – the great Russia of the saints, of kings, the great Russia of Peter the Great, of Catherine II, the great Russian empire, cultured, so much culture, so much humanity. You are the heirs of the great mother Russia. Go forward.”

The Vatican released the text of the address on Saturday but did not include the last, improvised paragraph. A video of the Pope making the comments was posted by religious websites.

“It is precisely with such imperialist propaganda, the ‘spiritual ties’ and the ‘need’ to save ‘great Mother Russia’ that the Kremlin justifies the killing of thousands of Ukrainians and the destruction of Ukrainian cities and villages,” Oleg Nikolenko, spokesperson for the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry, said on Facebook.

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“It is deeply regrettable that such notions of being a great power, which contribute, in essence, to Russia’s chronic aggressiveness, are voiced by the Pope, either knowingly or unknowingly,” Nikolenko said.

Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk, head of Ukraine’s Eastern Rite Catholic Church, said in a statement that the Pope’s words had caused “great pain and worry” and feared they could “inspire the neo-colonial ambitions of the aggressor country”. He asked the Vatican for an explanation.

An editorial on Italy’s Il Sismografo website, which specialises in Catholic affairs, called the Pope’s words “odd” at a delicate moment in history.