Ukrainian and allied officials criticized Pope Francis for stating that Kyiv really should have the “bravery” to negotiate an close to the war with Russia, a statement many interpreted as a phone on Ukraine to surrender.
The overseas minister of Poland, a vocal ally of Kyiv, and Ukraine’s ambassador to the Vatican both equally used World War II analogies to condemn the pope’s remarks, when a chief of one particular of Ukraine’s Christian church buildings on Sunday stated that only the country’s identified resistance to Russia’s aggression experienced prevented a mass slaughter of civilians.
In an interview recorded very last month with Swiss broadcaster RSI and partially produced on Saturday, Francis employed the phrase “the bravery of the white flag” as he argued that Ukraine, struggling with a feasible defeat, must be open up to peace talks brokered by international powers.
“How about, for stability, encouraging Putin to have the bravery to withdraw his army from Ukraine? Peace would straight away ensue devoid of the have to have for negotiations,” Polish Overseas Minister Radek Sikorski responded with a submit on X, previously Twitter.
In a different put up, Sikorski drew parallels among people calling for negotiations when “denying (Ukraine) the means to protect by itself” and European leaders’ “appeasement” of Adolf Hitler just ahead of Globe War II.
Andrii Yurash, Ukraine’s ambassador to the Holy See, reported that it was “needed to study lessons” from that conflict. His article on X appeared to assess the pope’s remarks to calls for “chatting with Hitler” when elevating “a white flag to satisfy him.”
A Vatican spokesman later on clarified that the pope supported “a prevent to hostilities (and) a truce reached with the bravery of negotiations,” rather than an outright Ukrainian surrender. Matteo Bruni mentioned that the journalist interviewing Francis applied the phrase “white flag” in the problem that prompted the controversial remarks.
“I consider that the strongest a person is the just one who looks at the condition, thinks about the persons and has the braveness of the white flag, and negotiates,” Francis reported, when asked to weigh in on the debate concerning people who say that Ukraine should agree to peace talks and people who argue that any negotiations would legitimize Moscow’s aggression.
Kyiv continues to be firm on not engaging straight with Russia on peace talks, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has mentioned a number of times the initiative in peace negotiations should occur from the country that has been invaded.
Through the war, Francis has tried out to maintain the Vatican’s classic diplomatic neutrality, but that has often been accompanied by obvious sympathy with the Russian rationale for invading Ukraine, these types of as when he observed that NATO was “barking at Russia’s doorway” with its eastward expansion.
Although the pope has spoken in the past about the want for negotiations amongst Kyiv and Moscow, the RSI job interview appears to mark the first time when he publicly applied conditions these types of as “white flag” or “defeated” when discussing the war.
Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk, the head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, mentioned Sunday that surrender is not on the minds of Ukrainians.
“Ukraine is wounded, but unconquered! Ukraine is exhausted, but it stands and will endure. Consider me, it never crosses anyone’s head to surrender. Even the place there is preventing nowadays: pay attention to our men and women in Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Odesa, Kharkiv, Sumy,” Shevchuk stated when conference with Ukrainians in New York Town. He mentioned the areas that have been below heavy Russian artillery and drone attacks.
Shevchuk also spoke of the brutality of Moscow’s aggression, referencing the town close to Kyiv wherever Russian profession remaining hundreds of civilians useless in the streets and in mass graves. He argued that, if not for Ukrainians’ fierce resistance as Russian forces marched on the capital in February 2022, the ugly scenes found in Bucha would have been “just an introduction.”
Through the Angelus prayer on Sunday from the window overlooking St. Peter’s Square, Francis explained that he was praying “for peace in the tormented Ukraine and in the Holy Land.”
“Permit the hostilities which trigger immense suffering among the the civilian populace cease as before long as doable,” he mentioned.