Pope asks Kyiv to raise white f lag

Ukraine has strongly rejected a call by the Pope to “raise the white flag” in its fight against the invading Russians and urged him to “stand on the side of good” against Moscow.

“Our flag is a yellow and blue one,” Dmytro Kuleba, the Ukrainian foreign minister, tweeted. “This is the flag by which we live, die and prevail. We shall never raise any other flags.”

There was anger in Kyiv at the weekend when Pope Francis said Ukraine should “have the courage to raise the white flag”.

Francis, 87, urged both sides to negotiate before things get 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 in an interview with Swiss TV.

Kuleba said: “The strongest is the one who, in the battle between good and evil, stands on the side of good rather than attempting to put them on the same footing and call it ‘negotiations’.”

He hinted at the Holy See’s neutrality during World War II, calling on the Vatican to “avoid repeating the mistakes of the past and to support Ukraine and its people in their just struggle for their lives”.

Inna Sovsun, a Ukrainian MP, said: “There is no point in negotiating with Russia. They never keep what they promise. Surrender means leaving our people in the occupied territories in torture camps, leaving children for brainwashing and facing a new war in 10 years when Russia will recover.”

President Edgars Rinkevics, of Latvia, tweeted: “One must not capitulate in face of evil; one must fight it and defeat it so that the evil raises the white flag and capitulates.”

At the weekend, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russia should not be invited to the first meeting of a peace conference envisaged in Switzerland in the coming months, although a Russian representative could attend after a roadmap for peace had been established.

The Pope’s comments came as CNN cited two senior US administration officials as saying that in late 2022 Washington began “preparing rigorously” for Russia potentially striking Ukraine with a tactical nuclear weapon.

The Vatican later clarified that the Pope had been calling for a truce, not for Ukraine to capitulate. – The Times