Ukraine said Sunday it would never surrender to Russia criticized Pope Francis’ statements inviting the belligerents to have “the courage to raise the white flag and negotiate”.
“Our flag is yellow and blueL. This is the flag by which we live, die and triumph. We will never raise other flags,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitro Kuleba said in a message on the X social network.
“Regarding the white flag we know the Vatican’s strategy in the first part of the 20th century. “I ask you to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past and to support Ukraine and its people in the struggle for life.”he added, clearly referring to collusion between the Vatican and Nazi Germany.
However, Kuleba said he hopes the Argentine pontiff “find the opportunity to make a canonical visit to Ukraine.”
In an interview broadcast on Saturday on Swiss public television RTS, Francis was asked about the possibilities of resolving the conflict in Ukraine and asked that there be no “It’s a shame to negotiate before things get worse.”
A Ukrainian holds a sign that says “I want to live in the country of living heroes!” during a demonstration calling on the authorities to bring back their relatives from Russian captivity, in central Kiev. EFE photo“I believe that those who see the situation, those who think about the people, those who have the courage to raise the white flag and negotiate are stronger,” he declared.
The primate of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, which officially has more than 5 million members in Ukraine, also reacted, without however clearly mentioning the pontiff.
The Vatican clarified that the Pope spoke of a white flag as a willingness to negotiate and not to give up.
“When you see that you are defeated, that things are not going well, you must have the courage to negotiate. You’re ashamed but with how many deaths will it end? Today it was possible to negotiate in time, look for some mediating countries. There are many of them in the war in Ukraine. Türkiye did it,” Francisco explained.
He added that “there is no shame in negotiating before the situation gets worse.”
“Ukraine is wounded, but not subjugated! (…) Believe me, no one thinks of surrendering, even where there is currently fighting. Listen to our people in the regions of Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Odessa, Kharkiv, Sumy,” Sviatoslav Shevchuk said Saturday during a mass in New York, where he was traveling.
The battle front
Russia has once again launched a massive drone attack against Ukrainian territory, with a total of 39 of these devicesof which the Ukrainian air defense forces managed to shoot down 35, while Russian forces, for their part, destroyed four Ukrainian unmanned aircraft in the border regions.
According to the Ukrainian Air Force, “Russian occupiers attacked the Kharkiv and Donetsk regions with four S-300 guided anti-aircraft missiles and launched 39 Shahed attack unmanned aerial vehicles from Cape Chauda, Crimea, and Primorsko-Akhtarsk , Russian Federation. “.
He added that 35 of these drones were shot down in the Kirovograd, Mikolayiv, Dnepropetrovsk, Cherkassy, Odessa, Kherson, Khmelnytskyi, Vinnitsia, Kyiv and Zhitomir regions.
Meanwhile, the Russian Defense Ministry reported the shooting down of four Ukrainian drones overnight over the Belgorod border region.
In the Russian border region of Kursk the air raid warning was activated this morning, as the governor of the region, Román Starovoit, warned on his Telegram account, inviting the population to take refuge.
Later, the ministry reported the shooting down around 3.30pm Moscow time (12.30pm GMT) of two more Ukrainian fixed-wing drones in Russia’s Novgorod region, about 850 kilometers north of Ukraine.
Eleven injured in Russian bombing in the Donetsk region
On the other hand, the Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office reported at least this Eleven people were injured and 17 multi-storey buildings were injured. and 27 vehicles were damaged in a Russian shelling early Sunday morning in the city of Mirnograd in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine.
According to the investigation, the attack occurred around 3 am local time, perhaps with S-300 missiles, which hit a residential neighborhood of the city, although the spokesman for the Tavria strategic-operational group of the Ukrainian army, Dmitró Likhoví, stressed that these were probably new, improved aerial bombs.
Source: Clarin
Mary Ortiz is a seasoned journalist with a passion for world events. As a writer for News Rebeat, she brings a fresh perspective to the latest global happenings and provides in-depth coverage that offers a deeper understanding of the world around us.