Pope’s Suggestion Of A White Flag For Ukraine Is Firmly Rejected

Mar 12, 2024

For context: the above map of a blood-red carve-up of Ukraine was shown last week by former Russian Prime Minister and President and Putin crony Dmitry Medvedev. This is what Russia is trying to achieve today.

A few days later Pope Francis had this suggestion: “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.

“When you see that you are defeated, that things are not going well, you have to have the courage to negotiate.”

…’When you see that you are defeated’…

This to a nation that broke Putin’s tank columns on the very outskirts of their capital.

If they had listened to the Pope’s advice back then, the entire wet-dream map of Medvedev would be real today. As would the mass graves of Ukrainians — because Putin doesn’t just want the territory of Ukraine, he wants the elimination of the Ukrainian people.

Some decades before, a previous pope has heeded Hitler’s advice and made sensible arrangements for the disposal of the Jews in Rome (more below).

So to pope Francis, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba immediately retorted “Our flag is blue and yellow. We live, die and win under it. We will not raise other flags.”

He was joined by Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski who tweeted: “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.” Sikorski asked whether the Pope would, for balance, encourage Russian President Vladimir Putin to have the courage to withdraw his army from Ukraine.

Throughout the war, Francis has had a struggle trying to maintain the Vatican’s traditional neutrality. He occasionally slips and allows sympathy for the Russian side show through, such as when he opined that NATO was “barking at Russia’s door” with its eastward expansion.

NATO does not expand. Nations, of their own volition, apply to join. This was apparently overlooked.

In his tweet, Kuleba urged the Holy See to “not repeat historical mistakes” as he alleged that the Vatican didn’t do enough to resist Nazi Germany.

David Kertzer has written a new account about how one of Francis’ predecessors, Pope Pius XII, arranged a secret agreement directly with Hitler to avoid saying anything about the holocaust that killed millions of Jews in WW2. Even when the Nazi SS rounded up more than 1,000 Jews in Rome itself, on October 16, 1943, the pope refused to make his voice heard. Held for two days in a complex near the walls of the Vatican, the Jews were then placed on a train bound for Auschwitz.

Hitler evidently relied partly on blackmail, threatening to publicize hundreds of cases of immorality — including the abuse of children — committed by German Catholic priests.

The fallibility of papal judgement is therefore firmly in the minds of people who have learned the lessons about tyranny — which apparently the papal state has not.

The head of Ukraine’s Greek Catholic Church, Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk, said Sunday that surrender isn’t on the minds of Ukrainians.

“Ukraine is exhausted, but it stands and will endure. Believe me, it never crosses anyone’s mind to surrender. Even where there is fighting today: listen to our people in Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Odesa, Kharkiv, Sumy,”

Francis was invited to Ukraine to see the support being demonstrated by “more than a million Ukrainian (Roman) Catholics, more than 5 million Greek Catholics, all Christians and all Ukrainians.”

Shevchuk also spoke of the brutality of Moscow’s invasion, referencing the town near Kyiv where Russian occupation left hundreds of civilians dead in the streets and in mass graves. He argued that the gruesome scenes seen in Bucha would have been “just an introduction” if not for Ukrainians’ fierce resistance as Russian troops marched on the capital in February 2022.

Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni back-filled later for the pope, clarifying that the pope supported “a stop to hostilities (and) a truce achieved with the courage of negotiations,” rather than an outright Ukrainian surrender.

But he said the words “when you are defeated”.

Medvedev’s map is disturbing vision of what would happen to Ukraine under a “white flag of negotiation”.…i.e. defeat.

He vows that Russia will do everything in its power to ensure its enemies “disappear from the face of the earth forever”.

Medvedev said: “One of Ukraine’s former leaders said at some point that Ukraine is not Russia. That concept needs to disappear — forever.

“Ukraine is definitely Russia.”

He added that Russia would never give up what is “theirs”.

He called the West the “aggressor”.

He said that the West should be grateful: “Very soon it will be 210 years since Paris was taken by Russian troops. [Russia was part of the alliance against Napoleon] “That time we cleaned up Europe, changed its authorities to those that suited us — then went back home with our flags held high.”

Russia’s ambassador to Britain echoed the perspective: Andrei Kelin said “No one has ever been able to defeat us. This is very important. The fact that it was the Soviet Union that made a decisive contribution to our victory over Nazi Germany.”

These are somewhat over-generous readings of history; Russia did not win the Battle of Waterloo, and Russian soldiers went into battle in WW2 riding American transport, using American ammunition and eating American food. Oh yes, and they were fighting against the Germans because their leader Stalin has made a pact with Hitler that gave him the green light to start WW2. They need to read real history books, not color-it-Russian crayon drawings.

The Russian vision for Ukraine he announced as: “The best thing that awaits them [Ukrainian citizens] is to be slaves in a decrepit European [prison]. “To play at court the role of a deaf-mute servant who is raped every day in a European kitchen by an foreign overlord.

“Or worse, who becomes expendable, which is what is sadly happening now.”

He reminded an audience recently about Putin’s comment: “Russia’s border doesn’t end anywhere.”

A concert has just been announced for March 18th in Russia — the day after Putin’s ‘election’ — in honor of the “tenth anniversary of the annexation of Crimea.”

There was no mention of a white flag prior to the annexation.

The megalomania is perfectly timed; the documentary 20 Days in Mauripol, which tells of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, has just won the Oscar for best feature — Ukraine’s first Oscar ever. “I wish to be able to exchange this for Russia never attacking Ukraine, never occupying our cities,” war reporter turned director Mstyslav Chernov said.

Ukrainian President Zelensky picked up on that sentiment, pointing to religious figures helping inside Ukraine. “They support us with prayer, with their discussion and with deeds. This is indeed what a church with the people is…Not 2,500 km away, somewhere, virtual mediation between someone who wants to live and someone who wants to destroy you.”

Latvia’s president picked up that banner:

Anton Gerashchenko, a former adviser to Ukraine’s internal affairs ministry, wrote on X: “It does seem strange that the pope doesn’t urge to defend Ukraine, doesn’t condemn Russia as an aggressor who killed tens of thousands of people, doesn’t urge Putin to stop, but calls on Ukraine to raise the white flag instead. Do all his Cardinals share this position?”

The pope is breaking more than a neutrality stance with Ukraine if it urges that the country should surrender. The pope has been a public supporter of sustainable living, and now Greenpeace has accused Russia of threatening Ukraine and the west with “an unprecedented escalation” against the environment itself if Moscow tries to restart reactors at the occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station. Recent comments from Russian officials have suggested a new attempt to restart nuclear energy generation may take place later this year. Yuriy Chernichuk, the Russian-appointed director of the site, told the plant’s staff newsletter at the end of December: “Next year is an anniversary year for the station and the station is determined to work at full capacity.”

Greenpeace accused the Atomic Energy Agency of being complacent, and said restarting any of the reactors should be completely ruled out.

If the pope is not going to recognize a pattern of aggression that extends even beyond the battlefield, one wonders if he deserves the title of “divine moral leader”.

Certainly the crowds in the streets of Rome do not think so.

**Crowds wave Ukrainian flags in St. Peter’s Square in Rome during the Pope’s talk.**

Zelensky deserves to have the final word on the Pope’s white flag suggestion: “Russian murderers and torturers are not moving further into Europe, only because they are being held back by Ukrainians with weapons in their hands and under the blue and yellow flag.”

There are signs that Putin is about to unleash a wave of domestic terrorism inside Russia, so he can appear to be the hero again, just like he was when he had hundreds of people killed by “Chechnyan terrorists” — who look more like FSB police agents. Perhaps the pope would like Russians to wave white flags at other Russians…

Recently France and Poland have started to consider the deployment of troops to Ukraine, and have let Putin know than any advance on Kiev or Odessa would trigger their deployment. In essence, the war is over. All Putin has to do is acknowledge it.

Maybe with a white flag.

The pope can carry it for him.