Ukraine Condemns Pope ‘White Flag’ Suggestion As Russian Strikes Kill Several
By Stefan J. Bos, Chief International Correspondent Worthy News
KYIV/BUDAPEST (Worthy News) – Ukraine and allies have criticized Pope Francis for saying that Kyiv should have the “courage” to negotiate an end to the war with Russia amid reports of more deaths and destruction.
The foreign ministers of Ukraine and Poland, which has not ruled out sending ground troops, condemned the pope’s remarks.
And a leader of one of Ukraine’s churches on Sunday said that only the country’s determined resistance to Moscow’s full-scale invasion, launched by Russian President Vladimir Putin on February 24, 2022, prevented a “mass slaughter” of civilians.
Critics disagree, saying the armed conflict killed and injured hundreds of thousands of people, a fact the pope brought home in an interview recorded last month with Swiss broadcaster RSI and partially released on Saturday.
Francis used the phrase “the courage of the white flag” to argue that Ukraine, facing a possible defeat, should be open to peace talks brokered by international powers.
However, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy dismissed as “virtual mediation” from a distance Pope Francis’s call for talks under a “white flag” with Russia.
Ukraine’s president did not directly reference Francis or his comments but mentioned religious figures helping inside Ukraine. “They support us with prayer, with their discussion, and with deeds. This is indeed what a church with the people is,” Zelenskiy said.
FAR AWAY
“Not 2,500 kilometers (2,553 miles) away, somewhere, virtual mediation between someone who wants to live and someone who wants to destroy you,” he added.
Ukraine’s minister for foreign affairs, Dmytro Kuleba, went further. Regarding Francis’ suggestion of raising the “white flag,” he wrote on social media platform X: “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.”
Kuleba urged the Vatican to “not repeat historical mistakes” as he alleged that it didn’t do enough to resist Nazi Germany.
Yet he also invited Francis to Ukraine, saying the pope’s visit would show support for the “more than a million Ukrainian (Roman) Catholics, more than 5 million Greek Catholics, all Christians and all Ukrainians.”
The head of Ukraine’s Greek Catholic Church, Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk, said Sunday that surrender isn’t on the minds of Ukrainians.
“Ukraine is exhausted, but it stands and will endure. Believe me, it never crosses anyone’s mind to surrender. Even where there is fighting today: listen to our people in Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Odesa, Kharkiv, Sumy,” Shevchuk said while meeting with Ukrainians in New York City.
He spoke about the regions that have been under heavy Russian artillery and drone attacks.
MOSCOW BRUTALITY
Shevchuk also mentioned the brutality of Moscow’s invasion, referencing the town near Kyiv where Russian occupation left hundreds of civilians dead in the streets and mass graves.
He argued that the gruesome scenes seen in Bucha would have been “just an introduction” if not for Ukrainians’ fierce resistance as Russian troops marched on the capital in February 2022.
Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni clarified that the pope supported “a stop to hostilities (and) a truce achieved with the courage of negotiations” rather than an outright Ukrainian surrender.
Bruni said that the journalist interviewing Francis used the term “white flag” in the question that prompted the controversial remarks.
“I think that the strongest one is the one who looks at the situation, thinks about the people and has the courage of the white flag, and negotiates,” Francis said.
He made the remarks when asked to weigh in on the debate between those who say that Ukraine should agree to peace talks and those who argue that any negotiations would legitimize Moscow’s aggression.
The controversy came as Poland’s Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski also criticized the pope’s words. And in separate remarks, he warned Moscow that the presence of NATO military alliance forces in Ukraine is “not unthinkable.”
APPRECIATING FRANCE
He told legislators he appreciated the French president for not ruling out that idea.
Last month, French President Emmanuel Macron said the possibility of Western troops being sent to Ukraine could not be ruled out, although officials later tried to play down his words.
Moscow has warned that if NATO sends combat troops, a direct and possible nuclear conflict between the alliance and Russia would be inevitable.
It backed up its words with missiles over the weekend as Russian shelling of towns in eastern Ukraine killed three more people Sunday, officials said.
Another strike on a residential building in the town of Myrnohrad wounded a dozen people, authorities added.
Moscow reportedly also launched missile attacks on the northeastern Kharkiv region, as well as drones targeting regions in the center and south of the country.
“Three people died as a result of today’s shelling in the Donetsk region,” the head of the embattled region, Vadym Filashkin, said on social media. He added that rescuers pulled out two bodies “from under the rubble of a house” in the town of Dobropillya, which he said Russia attacked with Iranian-designed Shahed drones.
MORE DEATHS
A 66-year-old man was also killed in the frontline town of Chasiv Yar, Filashkin said.
Further south, a Russian overnight strike on the east Ukrainian town of Myrnohrad injured a dozen people. “In Myrnohrad, the number of victims of the missile attack has increased to 12 people,” Filashkin said.
Local prosecutors earlier reported that Russian forces struck a residential neighborhood with three S-300 missiles around 3:00 am.
The prosecutor’s office said the strike injured a “16-year-old boy, five women and five men aged 34 to 95” and that 17 “high-rise buildings” were damaged in explosions.
Officials published photos of destroyed cars and blackened walls of housing blocks with debris outside.
Ukraine has been facing battlefield problems as Western supplies arrive slowly, Kyiv has said.
Russia made clear it suffers too, saying one woman was killed in Ukrainian shelling of a border village following several similar strikes. Separately, a fire broke out at an oil depot in Russia’s Kursk Oblast after a Ukrainian drone was shot down over its grounds, Roman Starovoit, the region’s governor, claimed Sunday.
The governor did not include any information on any casualties or damage to the oil depot.
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