Ukraine hit back at Pope Francis on Sunday, vowing to “never” surrender to Russia, in response to the sovereign pontiff’s call to have “the courage to raise the white flag” and negotiate, AFP and News.ro reported. .

“Our flag is yellow and blue. This is the flag for which we live, die and triumph. We will never raise another flag,” replied the head of Ukrainian diplomacy, Dmytro Kuleba, in a message on X (formerly Twitter).

“As for the white flag, we know the strategy of the Vatican in the first half of the 20th century. I invite you to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past and support Ukraine and its people in the struggle for life,” he added, clearly referring to the period of World War II and the Roman Church’s relationship with Nazi Germany.

Finally, the head of diplomacy from Kyiv expressed hope that the Sovereign Pontiff “will find an opportunity to make a canonical visit to Ukraine.”

In an interview given to Swiss public television RTS, dated at the beginning of February and broadcast on Saturday, Pope Francis, when asked about the situation in Ukraine, called on Kyiv “not to hesitate to negotiate until it gets worse.”

“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,” he said.

Pope Francis, who has led the Catholic Church since 2013, has already drawn criticism in the first months of the Russian invasion of Ukraine for vaguely calling Russia the aggressor.

Last year, he appointed a cardinal as a mediator to try to reach peace talks. The cardinal has already visited Moscow, Kyiv, Washington and Beijing.

Vatican specifications

On Saturday night, the Vatican tried to rectify the situation, insisting in a press release that the phrase “white flag” meant “a cessation of hostilities, a courageously negotiated truce” and not surrender.

After the Sunday prayer “Angel of the Lord”, Pope Francis also called for peace “in martyred Ukraine”.

But other officials took his words seriously. Andriy Yuratsy, Kyiv’s ambassador to the Vatican, compared this proposal to negotiations with Hitler during World War II. “If we want to end the war, we must do everything we can to kill the Dragon,” he wrote on X.

The head of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church, which officially has more than 5 million believers in Ukraine, also reacted, although without clearly mentioning the Pope. “Believe me, no one has the thought of surrendering, even where the fighting is going on today – listen to our people from the Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Odesa, Kharkiv, Sumy regions!” – said Svyatoslav Shevchuk on Saturday during the service in the village. church in New York, where he traveled.

For his part, Edgars Rinkevich, the president of Latvia, a former Soviet republic that has strained relations with Moscow and fears Russian aggression, asked Ukraine “not to capitulate to evil” but to defeat it, so that “it (evil) Russia – not) raise a white flag”.

____

• Follow the latest events of the war in Ukraine LIVETEXT on HotNews.ro