Pope's 'white flag' remarks about Ukraine war angers Kiev, its allies

Leaders from Ukraine, Poland and Latvia sharply criticized Pope Francis' remarks from the Vatican that Ukraine should negotiate with Moscow after more than two years of war.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the church should be among the people "and not two and a half thousand kilometres away, somewhere, to mediate virtually between someone who wants to live and someone who wants to destroy you."

Zelensky said "when Russian evil started this war" on February 24, 2022, "all Ukrainians stood up to defend themselves. Christians, Muslims, Jews - everyone."

He thanked every Ukrainian cleric who is working with the defence forces. These clergy are on the front line, protecting life and humanity, he said. They support soldiers with prayers, conversations and deeds.

"That is what the church is - with the people."

The pope, in comments made to Swiss public television that have been heavily criticized, said: "When you see that you are defeated, that things are not going well, it is necessary to have the courage to negotiate," the pope said when asked about the war in Ukraine. He did not explicitly name Ukraine or Russia in his reply.

He went on to say that the strongest actor is the one that "thinks about the people and has the courage of the white flag, and negotiates."

Talks should take place with the help of international powers, Francis said.

Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski wasn't having any of that.

"How about encouraging [Russian President Vladimir] Putin to have the courage to withdraw his army from Ukraine as compensation? Then peace would return immediately without the need for negotiations," Sikorski wrote on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.

A portion of Francis' interview, which was recorded in early February, was released on Saturday, according to Vatican News, a website of the Holy See. The full interview is to air March 20.

Poland is one of the most committed political and military supporters of Ukraine as it fights to repel Russia's full-scale invasion. A member of both the European Union and NATO, Poland has taken in almost 1 million refugees from its eastern neighbour.

There were incensed reactions in other countries too.

"My Sunday morning take: 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," Latvia's President Edgars Rinkēvičs wrote on X.

In Germany, Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock reacted with bewilderment.

"I really wonder what he was thinking," Baerbock said in an interview on German broadcaster ARD on Sunday evening. "I don't understand it."

Baerbock recalled seeing first-hand the devastation wrought by Russia's invasion, including the aftermath of an attack on a kindergarten, and also pointed to Russia's abduction of Ukrainian children.

"I ask myself: Where is the pope? The pope must know about this," the minister said.

A defence specialist in the coalition government of Chancellor Olaf Scholz also sharply contradicted Francis' appeal.

"Before the Ukrainian victims raise the white flag, the pope should loudly and unmistakably call on the brutal Russian perpetrators to take down their pirate flag - the symbol of death and Satan," Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann, the chairwoman of the German Parliament's Defence Committee, told the Funke Mediengruppe newspapers on Sunday.

"And why in God's name does he not condemn the verbal murderous incitement of Kyrill, head of the Russian Orthodox Church and ex-KGB agent, towards the Ukrainian people?" asked Strack-Zimmermann, who is a member of the liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP).

She added: "As a Catholic, I am ashamed that he refrains from doing this."

There has been war on Ukraine's territory for 10 years and countless people have been killed, Göring-Eckardt said, adding: "It is Vladimir Putin who can end the war and the suffering immediately - not Ukraine. Anyone who demands that Ukraine simply surrender is giving the aggressor what he has illegally taken and is thus accepting the annihilation of Ukraine."