Ukraine war briefing: Pope urges Ukraine to have courage of ‘white flag’ and negotiate end to war

The 87-year-old pontiff said parties should ‘have the courage to negotiate’, and do so ‘before things get worse’ - what we know on day 746

Pope Francis has said in an interview that Ukraine should have what he called the courage of the “white flag” and negotiate an end to the war with Russia. Francis made his comments in an interview recorded last month with Swiss broadcaster RSI, well before Friday’s latest offer by Turkish president Tayyip Erdogan to host a summit between Ukraine and Russia to end the war. “Don’t be ashamed to negotiate before things get worse,” the 87-year-old pontiff said.

Turkish and US officials have held comprehensive talks about the wars in Ukraine and Gaza and various bilateral issues during meetings in Washington, Turkey’s foreign minister said late on Friday. Hakan Fidan said he discussed ways to end Russia’s invasion of Ukraine with officials including US counterpart Antony Blinken, reiterating that Ankara believed it is time to discuss paths toward an end to the war but that Turkey did not see this willingness from Kyiv and Moscow. “We need a basis for talking, for this war to stop, and a dialogue to prevent worse crises, and we call for this,” Fidan said.

British foreign minister David Cameron said he opposes sending western troops to Ukraine, even for training missions, in an interview with German daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung published on Saturday. Cameron said training missions are best carried out abroad. Placing foreign soldiers in Ukraine would provide targets for Russia, he said.

Poland’s foreign minister says the presence of Nato forces in Ukraine “is not unthinkable” and that he appreciates the French president for not ruling out that idea. Last month Emmanuel Macron said the possibility of western troops being sent to Ukraine could not be ruled out. Radek Sikorski said he appreciated Macron’s initiative “because it is about Putin being afraid, not us being afraid of Putin”.

Ukrainian authorities said two people including a teenage boy were killed Saturday in Russian artillery attacks. Serhiy Lysak, governor of Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region, said a 16-year-old boy was killed and a 22-year-old man injured in a morning artillery attack that hit the town of Chervonohryhorivka.

Ukrainian officials said Saturday a Russian bomb landed near a block of flats in the southern city of Kherson overnight wounding a child. It published a video of a destroyed building, with a large crater outside it. “A seven-year-old boy who suffered from the shelling is under medical supervision,” authorities said.

Russian air defences have downed a Ukrainian MiG-29 fighter jet over Ukraine’s Donetsk region, the RIA news agency cited Russia’s defence ministry as saying on Saturday. Ukrainian authorities have not reported any fighter jet losses in recent days.

Car traffic was temporarily suspended over the Crimea Bridge on Saturday, Russian authorities said on the Telegram messaging app, a move often made because of expected or actual attacks. The bridge connects mainland Russia to Crimea, which Moscow annexed from Ukraine in 2014, but which Kyiv still considers its territory.

A Moscow court has sentenced a student to 10 days in jail after he renamed his wifi network with a pro-Kyiv slogan during the military offensive in Ukraine, the Ria-Novosti news agency reported on Saturday. The student at Moscow State University replaced the name of the network from his wifi router with Slava Ukraini, meaning ‘Glory to Ukraine’, the rallying cry of Ukraine forces. The court found him guilty of a “public demonstration of Nazi symbolics … or symbols of extremist organisations,” Ria-Novosti said.

Russia said Saturday that it had destroyed 47 Ukrainian drones over its southern regions overnight, mostly in the Rostov area bordering Ukraine. Kyiv has regularly launched drones into Russia in response to Moscow’s military offensive.

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