Ukraine on Sunday angrily rejected Pope Francis’ call to negotiate with Russia two years into its invasion, vowing “never” to surrender after the pontiff said Kyiv should “have the courage to raise the white flag.”
The row over his comments came as officials in Ukraine said that Russian shelling in the east had killed three people. A strike on a residential building in the eastern town of Myrnograd wounded a dozen more people, Kyiv said.
Ukraine also said Moscow launched missile attacks on the northeastern Kharkiv region and sent attack drones across the center and south of the nation.
Photo: Reuters
Russia said that one woman was killed in Ukrainian shelling of a border village.
The pope’s comments this weekend fueled anger in Kyiv this weekend after he said in an interview that Ukraine should negotiate with Russia, which has seized large swathes of its territory in the offensive.
“Our flag is a yellow and blue one. This is the flag by which we live, die and prevail. We shall never raise any other flags,” Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Dmytro Kuleba said.
He was responding to the pope’s interview with Swiss broadcaster RTS in which the Catholic leader raised the prospect of surrender — two years after Kyiv has battled Russian forces on its territory.
“I believe that the strongest are those who see the situation, think about the people, and have the courage to raise the white flag and negotiate,” Pope Francis said in an interview conducted early last month and broadcast on Saturday.
Ukrainian officials compared the statement to some of the Catholic Church collaborating with Nazi Germany during World War II.
“At the same time, when it comes to the white flag, we know this Vatican strategy from the first half of the 20th century,” Kuleba said, calling on the Holy See to “avoid repeating the mistakes of the past.”
Ukrainian Ambassador to the Vatican Andrii Yurash went further, comparing the pope’s negotiation suggestion to talking to Adolf Hitler.
“[The] lesson is only one — if we want to finish war, we have to do everything to kill [the] Dragon!” he wrote on social media.
After the interview aired, Francis offered fresh prayers for “martyred Ukraine,” as Vatican officials said his call was simply intended to end fierce fighting, but in his evening address on Sunday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy renewed Ukraine’s criticism.
Ukrainians of all faiths stood up to defend their nation when Russia invaded, he said.
“Christians, Muslims, Jews — everyone... They support us with prayer, conversation and deeds. This is what the church is — with people, and not two-and-a-half-thousand kilometers away, somewhere to mediate virtually between someone who wants to live and someone who wants to destroy you.”
Some Western diplomats also joined the criticism.
“Russia is the aggressor and breaks international law! Therefore Germany asks Moscow to stop the war, not Kyiv!”, German Ambassador to the Vatican Bernhard Kotsch wrote on social media.
Later on Sunday, French President Emmanuel Macron’s office said that he would visit Ukraine “in the coming weeks,” after a telephone call with Zelenskiy to “rapidly” pursue international munitions and aid efforts for Kyiv.
Macron raised eyebrows late last month by refusing to rule out the deployment of Western troops in Ukraine, a proposal widely denounced by the US and European allies.
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