Moscow says pope’s call for Kyiv talks a request to West
MOSCOW/KYIV — Russia said Pope Francis’ call for talks with Moscow to end the conflict in Ukraine was a request to Kyiv’s Western allies to abandon their ambition to defeat Russia and to recognize the West’s mistake in the conflict, Italy’s ANSA news agency reported.
Pope Francis has said that Ukraine should have what he called the courage of the “white flag” and negotiate an end to the fighting with Russia that followed Moscow’s special military operation that started two years ago.
“The way I see it, the pope is asking the West to put aside its ambitions and admit that it was wrong,” the ANSA news agency quoted Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova as saying.
Zakharova said the West was using Ukraine as an instrument of its ambitions to weaken Russia.
As for Russia, “we have never blocked the negotiations”, she said, adding that the situation in Ukraine was “at a dead end”.
Ukraine on Sunday rebuffed Pope Francis’ call to negotiate an end to the fighting with Russia, with President Volodymyr Zelensky saying the pontiff was engaging in “virtual mediation” and his foreign minister saying Kyiv would never capitulate.
Francis said that when things were going badly for a party to a conflict, one had to show the “courage of the white flag” and negotiate.
Zelensky made no direct reference to Francis or his comments but mentioned religious figures helping Ukraine. Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, said on the X platform that the strong person in any dispute “stands on the side of good rather than attempting to put them on the same footing and call it ‘negotiations’”.
The row over his comments came as officials in Ukraine said Russian shelling in the east had killed three people on Sunday. A strike on a residential building in the eastern town of Myrnograd wounded a dozen more people, said Kyiv.
Ukraine also said Moscow launched missile attacks on the northeastern Kharkiv region and sent attack drones across the center and south of the country.
Russia, meanwhile, said one woman was killed in Ukrainian shelling of a border village.
In another development, the Russian embassy in Washington said it is in “close contact” with the US State Department ahead of the presidential election in Russia this week to ensure the security of the diplomatic mission, Ambassador Anatoly Antonov said on Monday.
Constant provocations
“In the conditions of constant provocations, the embassy works calmly. We are dealing with issues related to the organization of the upcoming elections in a businesslike manner,” Antonov said on the embassy’s Telegram messaging channel.
“We expect that the Americans will fulfill their obligations to ensure the security of the diplomatic mission.”
Antonov did not specify what provocations he was referring to, saying only that the “degree of Russophobic rhetoric” of President Joe Biden’s administration “is off the chart”.
Last week, Russia summoned the US ambassador in Moscow to warn her it would expel US diplomats it deems to be interfering in its internal affairs through “subversive actions and the spread of information” related to the election.
The French Presidency said on Sunday that a visit by President Emmanuel Macron to Ukraine should take place in the coming weeks, the third time a planned trip to the country has been postponed since February.
Macron had initially said he planned to go in February to sign a bilateral security accord with Zelensky. That was postponed with Zelensky eventually coming to Paris to conclude the accord.
Diplomats said a second date had been planned at the start of March before being pushed back to later this week.