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Pope Francis has said that Ukraine should have what he called
the courage of the "white flag" and negotiate an end to the war
with Russia that followed Moscow's full-scale invasion two years
ago and that has killed tens of thousands.
"The way I see it, the Pope is asking the West to put aside its
ambitions and admit that it was wrong," the ANSA news agency
quoted Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova as
saying.
Zakharova said that the West was using Ukraine as an instrument
of its ambitions to weaken Russia.
As for Russia, "we have never blocked the negotiations," she
said, adding that the situation in Ukraine was "at a dead end".
Ukraine on Sunday rebuffed Pope Francis's call to negotiate an
end to the war with Russia, with President Volodymyr Zelenskiy
saying the pontiff was engaging in "virtual mediation" and his
foreign minister saying Kyiv would never capitulate.
President Vladimir Putin sent thousands of troops into Ukraine
in February 2022, triggering a full-scale war after eight years
of conflict in eastern Ukraine between Ukrainian forces on the
one side and pro-Russian Ukrainians and Russian proxies on the
other.
Putin says that shortly after he sent troops into Ukraine,
Moscow and Kyiv almost agreed a ceasefire but that it was
torpedoed by Britain.
Reuters reported last month that Putin's suggestion of a
ceasefire in Ukraine to freeze the war was rejected by the
United States after contacts between intermediaries.
Putin casts the Ukraine war as an existential battle between
sacred Russian civilization and an arrogant West which he says
is in cultural, political and economic decline and which sought
to humiliate Russia after the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union.
The West casts Putin's invasion as an imperial-style land grab
that challenges the post-Cold War international order and pits
Russia against the West.
Ukraine says it is fighting for its existence and will not rest
until every last Russian soldier is ejected from its territory.
Zelenskiy said last week that Russia will not be invited to the
first peace summit due to be held in Switzerland.
(Reporting by Reuters; editing by Guy Faulconbridge)
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