Pope’s ‘white flag’ remark criticized by Ukraine and its allies

KYIV, Ukraine — Ukrainian and allied officials criticized Pope Francis for saying that Kyiv should have the “courage” to negotiate an end to the war with Russia, a statement many interpreted as a call for Ukraine to surrender.

The foreign minister of Poland, a vocal ally of Kyiv, and Ukraine’s ambassador to the Vatican, both used World War II analogies to condemn the pope’s remarks. And a leader of one of Ukraine’s Christian churches on Sunday said that only the country’s determined resistance to Moscow’s full-scale invasion, launched by Russian President Vladimir Putin on Feb. 24, 2022, had prevented a mass slaughter of civilians.

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” as he argued that Ukraine, facing a possible defeat, should be open to peace talks brokered by international powers.

“How about, for balance, encouraging Putin to have the courage to withdraw his army from Ukraine? Peace would immediately ensue without the need for negotiations,” Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski responded with a post on X, formerly Twitter.

In a separate post, Sikorski drew parallels between those calling for negotiations while “denying (Ukraine) the means to defend itself” and European leaders’ “appeasement” of Adolf Hitler just before World War II.

Andrii Yurash, Ukraine’s ambassador to the Holy See, said that it was “necessary to learn lessons” from that conflict. His tweet appeared to compare the pope’s comments to calls for “talking with Hitler” while raising “a white flag to satisfy him.”

Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni later 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, 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.

Kyiv remains firm on not engaging directly with Russia on peace talks, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said multiple times that the initiative in peace negotiations must come from the country that has been invaded.