Kiev responded sharply on Sunday to Pope Francis, vowing to
“never”
surrender to Russia, to the appeal launched by the sovereign pontiff to the belligerents in the conflict in Ukraine to have
“the courage to raise the white flag”
.
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In an interview on Swiss television broadcast on Saturday, the sovereign pontiff called for
“having the courage to raise a white flag and to negotiate”
to put an end to the Ukrainian war
“before things get worse”
.
“I believe that the strongest are those who see the situation, think about people and have the courage to raise the white flag and negotiate
,” he declared in this interview with RTS at the beginning of February, questioned about a debate in Ukraine on the path to follow.
“Our flag is yellow and blue. This is the flag for which we live, die and triumph. We will never raise other flags
,” retorted the head of Ukrainian diplomacy, Dmytro Kuleba, in a message on X.
“When it comes to the white flag, we know the strategy of the Vatican during the first part of the 20th century. I call to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past and to support Ukraine and its people in their fight for life
,” he added, in obvious reference to the period of the Second World War and relations between the Church with Nazi Germany.
He nevertheless said he hoped that the sovereign pontiff
“will find the opportunity to make a canonical visit to Ukraine”
.
Vatican Focus
As of Saturday evening, the Vatican sought to correct the situation by insisting in a press release on the fact that the
“white flag”
formula here meant
“a cessation of hostilities, a truce obtained with the courage to negotiate”
rather than a surrender.
After the Angelus prayer on Sunday, Pope Francis also called for peace
“in martyred Ukraine”
.
But other officials took his comments badly.
kyiv's ambassador to the Vatican, Andriy Yurash, compared the suggestion to negotiations with Hitler during World War II.
“If we want to end the war, we must do everything to kill the Dragon!”
, he wrote on X.
The primate of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, which officially has more than 5 million members in Ukraine, also reacted, without clearly mentioning the pope.
“Believe me, no one has in their heads the idea of surrendering, even where the fighting is taking place today - listen to our people in the Kherson, Zaporizhia, Odessa, Kharkov, Sumy regions!”
, said Sviatoslav Shevchuk on Saturday during a mass in a church in New York where he was traveling.
Edgars Rinkevics, the president of Latvia, a former Soviet republic which has tense relations
with
Moscow and fears Russian
aggression
, called on
he who
“hoists the white flag”
.