The Foreign Minister of Ukraine, Dmitro Kuleba, criticized this Sunday some statements by Pope Francis in which the Pontiff recommended that Ukraine to raise a “white flag” to facilitate peace negotiations with Russia to end more than two years of war.

“Our flag is yellow and blue. This is the flag by which we live, die and prevail. We will never raise any other flag“, the minister responded on social networks before also reproaching that “with regard to the white flag, we know the Vatican’s strategy in the first half of the 20th century.”

“I urge you to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past and to support Ukraine and its people in their just fight for their lives,” the minister added in a veiled mention of the support that the Vatican granted to totalitarian regimes in the past.

Still, Kuleba thanked the Pope for “his constant prayers for peace” and reiterated its invitation to visit the country. We continue to hope that after two years of devastating war in the heart of Europe, the Pontiff will find the opportunity to make an apostolic visit to Ukraine,” he noted.

The Polish Foreign Minister, Radoskaw Sikorski, has also regretted the statements of Pope Francis.

“How about you instead encourage Putin to buckle down and withdraw his army from Ukraine as compensation. That would guarantee immediate peace without needing negotiations,” the minister wrote on his social network account X.

The minister reacted in these terms to the excerpts from the interview given by the pope to a Swiss network, published this past Saturday. In them, the Pope urged the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, to “think of the people and have the courage of the white flag, to negotiate.”