VATICAN, January 9. /TASS/. Russian Ambassador to the Holy See Alexander Avdeyev delivered Russian President Vladimir Putin’s New Year’s greetings to Pope Francis, as the diplomat himself told TASS on Monday.

According to him, following a meeting with members of the diplomatic corps, Pope Francis thanked the embassy for facilitating the prisoner swaps between Russia and Ukraine.

"I conveyed the Russian president’s greetings to Pope Francis and he passed his greetings in return, expressing gratitude for assistance in the prisoner swaps," the diplomat said.

The pontiff said earlier that the Vatican sought to contribute to prisoner exchanges. As Avdeyev explained then, Russia released or exchanged Ukrainian prisoners of war based on, among other things, the lists that Pope Francis handed over through the Russian embassy to the Holy See.

Avdeyev also said that he had handed a special edition of Russian-Spanish and Spanish-Russian dictionary of religious terms as a gift to the pope who comes from Argentina.