KYIV, Ukraine: Ukraine on Sunday angrily rejected Pope Francis’s call to negotiate with Russia two years into its invasion, vowing “never” to surrender after the pontiff said Kyiv should “have the courage to raise the white flag.”
The row over his comments came as officials in Ukraine said Russian shelling in the east had killed three people Sunday. A strike on a residential building in the eastern town of Myrnograd wounded a dozen more people, said Kyiv.
Ukraine also said Moscow launched missile attacks on the northeastern Kharkiv region and sent attack drones across the center and south of the country.
Russia, meanwhile, said one woman was killed in Ukrainian shelling of a border village.
The pope’s comments this weekend fueled anger in Kyiv this weekend after he said in an interview that Ukraine should negotiate with Russia, which has seized large swathes of its territory in the offensive.
“Our flag is a yellow and blue one. This is the flag by which we live, die, and prevail. We shall never raise any other flags,” Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said.
He was responding to the Pope’s interview to Swiss broadcaster RTS in which the Catholic leader raised the prospect of surrender — two years after Kyiv has battled Russian forces on its territory.
“I believe that the strongest are those who see the situation, think about the people, and have the courage to raise the white flag and negotiate,” Pope Francis said in an interview conducted in early February and broadcast on Saturday.
Ukrainian officials compared the statement to some of the Catholic church collaborating with Nazi Germany during World War II.
“At the same time, when it comes to the white flag, we know this Vatican strategy from the first half of the 20th century,” Kuleba said, calling on the Holy See to “avoid repeating the mistakes of the past.”
Ukraine’s ambassador to the Vatican, Andrii Yurash, went further, comparing the Pope’s negotiation suggestion to talking to Adolf Hitler:
“(The) lesson is only one — if we want to finish war, we have to do everything to kill (the) Dragon!,” he said on social media.
After the interview aired, Francis offered fresh prayers for “martyred Ukraine,” as Vatican officials said his call was simply intended to end fierce fighting.
Some Western diplomats joined the criticism.
“Russia is the aggressor and breaks international law! Therefore Germany asks Moscow to stop the war, not Kyiv!,” said Bernhard Kotsch, Germany’s envoy to the Vatican.
Kuleba said Kyiv hoped Francis would visit his war-torn country after more than two years of battling its bigger neighbor.
In Ukraine itself, officials reported the latest deaths.
“Three people died as a result of today’s shelling in the Donetsk region,” said the head of the embattled region, Vadym Filashkin, on social media.
He said rescuers pulled out two bodies “from under the rubble of a house” in the town of Dobropillya, which he said Russia attacked with Iranian-made Shahed drones at night.
A 66-year-old man was also killed in the frontline town of Chasiv Yar, Filashkin said.
Further south, a Russian night-time strike on the east Ukrainian town of Myrnograd wounded a dozen people, Kyiv said. Myrnograd lies in the Donetsk region around 40 kilometers (25 miles) from the frontline with Russian forces.
Kyiv also said it had shot down more than two dozen Iranian-made Shahed attack drones launched by Russia across central and southern regions, including the Kyiv region.
Russia on Sunday said Ukrainian shelling killed a woman in the border village of Kulbaki, 10 kilometers (six miles) from Ukraine in the Kursk region.
“As a result of a direct hit from a shell, a residential building caught fire and a local woman died. Her husband had extensive burns and is now receiving qualified medical care,” Kursk governor Roman Starovoyt said.
In Moscow-occupied Ukraine, Russian-installed official Denis Pushilin said Kyiv had shelled a bread factory at night in the city of Gorlovka, wounding four workers.
Kyiv slams Pope’s ‘white flag’ call, vows no surrender to Russia
https://arab.news/4gb2n
Kyiv slams Pope’s ‘white flag’ call, vows no surrender to Russia
- Ukraine says Moscow has launched missile attacks on the northeastern Kharkiv region and sent attack drones across the center and south of the country
13 killed as Russia pummels Ukraine with biggest ever drone attack
- Ukraine’s emergency services described a night of “terror” amid a second straight night of massive Russian air strikes, including on the capital Kyiv
KYIV, Ukraine: Russia launched a record number of drones against Ukraine, killing 13 people across the country, officials said Sunday, even as Kyiv and Moscow completed their biggest prisoner exchange since the start of the war.
Ukraine’s emergency services described a night of “terror” amid a second straight night of massive Russian air strikes, including on the capital Kyiv.
The attacks came as the two countries completed their biggest prisoner swap since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022, with 1,000 captured soldiers and civilian prisoners sent back by each side.
Those killed in the latest Russian strikes included two children, aged eight and 12, and a 17-year-old, killed in the northwestern region of Zhytomyr, officials said.
Their school named the dead children as Roman, Tamara and Stanislav in a post on Facebook, saying: “Their memory will always be with us. We will never forgive.”
“Without truly strong pressure on the Russian leadership, this brutality cannot be stopped,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on social media.
“The silence of America, the silence of others around the world only encourages Putin,” he said, adding: “Sanctions will certainly help.”
The European Union’s top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, called for “the strongest international pressure on Russia to stop this war.”
“Last night’s attacks again show Russia bent on more suffering and the annihilation of Ukraine. Devastating to see children among innocent victims harmed and killed,” she said on social media.
German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul also denounced the attacks. “Putin does not want peace, he wants to carry on the war and we shouldn’t allow him to do this,” he said.
“For this reason we will approve further sanctions at a European level.”
The strikes came after Russia launched 14 ballistic missiles and 250 drones overnight Friday to Saturday, which wounded 15 people, according to Ukrainian officials.
Ukraine’s military said on Sunday it had shot down a total of 45 Russian missiles and 266 attack drones overnight.
Air force spokesman Yuriy Ignat said 298 drones were launched, adding that this was “the highest number ever.”
Four people were also reported dead in Ukraine’s western Khmelnytskyi region, four in the Kyiv region.
Two people died in the Mykolaiv region. On Sunday evening Vitaliy Kim, governor of the southern region, said the body of a second person had been recovered from the rubble.
Emergency services said 16 people were injured in the Kyiv region, including three children, in the “massive night attack.”
“We saw the whole street was on fire,” a 65-year-old retired woman, Tetiana Iankovska, told AFP in Markhalivka village just southwest of Kyiv.
Russia said its strikes were aimed at Ukraine’s “military-industrial complex” and that it had brought down 110 Ukrainian drones.
Flights at Moscow airports suffered temporary closures due to Ukrainian drone activity but no injuries were reported, officials said.
Russia also said it had exchanged another 303 Ukrainian prisoners of war for the same number of Russian soldiers held by Kyiv — the last phase of a swap agreed during talks in Istanbul on May 16.
Russia and Ukraine had over three days “carried out the exchange of 1,000 people for 1,000 people,” the defense ministry said.
Zelensky confirmed the swap was complete.
Both sides received 390 people in the first stage on Friday and 307 on Saturday.
US President Donald Trump on Friday congratulated the two countries for the swap.
“This could lead to something big,” he wrote on social media.
Trump’s efforts to broker a ceasefire in Europe’s biggest conflict since World War II have so far been unsuccessful, despite his pledge to rapidly end the fighting.
An AFP reporter saw some of the formerly captive Ukrainian soldiers arrive at a hospital in the northern Chernigiv region, emaciated but smiling and waving to crowds.
“It’s simply crazy. Crazy feelings,” 31-year-old Konstantin Steblev, a soldier, told AFP Friday as he stepped back onto Ukrainian soil after three years in captivity.
One former captive, 58-year-old Viktor Syvak, told AFP was overcome by the emotional homecoming.
Captured in the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol, he had been held for 37 months and 12 days. “It’s impossible to describe. I can’t put it into words. It’s very joyful,” he said of the release.
French authorities blame sabotage for second power blackout
- Prosecutors said they had opened an investigation and were looking into a claim Sunday by two anarchist groups of “responsibility for the attack on electrical installations on the Cote d’Azur”
NICE, France: French authorities on Sunday blamed sabotage and ordered heightened security after a fire at an electricity sub-station in Nice caused the second major power blackout in two days along the Riviera.
The latest fire cut power to about 45,000 homes in western Nice for several hours, authorities said. Nice airport was briefly without electricity, the city’s deputy mayor Gael Nofri told AFP.
A similar arson attack on a power substation on Saturday partially disrupted the final day of the Cannes film festival, forcing organizers to use backup generators to keep the event going.
Prosecutors said they had opened an investigation and were looking into a claim Sunday by two anarchist groups of “responsibility for the attack on electrical installations on the Cote d’Azur.” The claim was posted on an alternative website.
“I vigorously condemn these criminal acts hitting our country,” Nice mayor Christian Estrosi said on X.
“We are making images from our monitoring center available to investigators and will strengthen the city’s network at strategic electrical sites in coming days,” he added.
“Until the perpetrators of these acts have been arrested, we will not ease up our attention anywhere,” Estrosi told reporters.
Nice’s chief prosecutor Damien Martinelli said studies had been carried out “to clarify the damage and the methods used to carry out the act” and that police were investigating “arson by an organized group.”
Police said that tire marks had been found near the Nice transformer and someone had broken into a room in the building.
An arson attack at a power substation and a bid to cut the legs of an electricity pylon near Cannes cut power to 160,000 homes in the region for five hours on Saturday.
The cut knocked out traffic lights and bank machines in Cannes, as well as threatening the finale to the film festival.
The festival “switched to an alternative electricity power supply” to keep the closing ceremony and award events going.
Firefighters battled for five hours to put out the flames at the sub-station, officials said.
In the attack on the high-voltage pylon, three of its four legs had been damaged, said prosecutors.
More sanctions against Russia needed, deep concern about Gaza: German minister
- “Germany has a clear position: no expulsions (of the Palestinian population) from the Gaza Strip, an end to hunger
- Russian forces launched a barrage of 367 drones and missiles at Ukrainian cities overnight, including at the capital Kyiv, in the largest aerial attack of the war so far, killing at least 12 people and injuring dozens more, officials said
BERLIN: Russia’s latest wave of attacks on Ukraine should be answered with additional Western sanctions, Germany’s Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul told public broadcaster ARD on Sunday.
“(Russian President Vladimir) Putin is not interested in peace, he wants to continue this war, and we must not allow this, which is why the European Union will agree additional sanctions,” he said in a live interview on ARD’s Bericht aus Berlin.
Russian forces launched a barrage of 367 drones and missiles at Ukrainian cities overnight, including at the capital Kyiv, in the largest aerial attack of the war so far, killing at least 12 people and injuring dozens more, officials said.
Wadephul added that the United States was also able to launch new sanctions packages, and he hoped that the weight of the measures would get Putin to the negotiating table, to avoid what he called potentially severe consequences for Russia’s economy and energy sectors.
Moving on to Israel’s military offensive in Gaza, Wadephul said Germany was deeply concerned about the “unbearable” human suffering, where he said he was in touch with Israeli, Middle Eastern and European peers, to seek to broker solutions.
“Germany has a clear position: no expulsions (of the Palestinian population) from the Gaza Strip, an end to hunger. And the Strip as well as the West Bank belong to the Palestinians, on the way to a two-state solution,” he said.
Israeli military strikes killed at least 23 Palestinians across the Gaza Strip on Sunday, including a local journalist and a senior rescue service official, local health authorities said.
US military spent $6 billion in the past 3 years to recruit and retain troops
WASHINGTON: The US military spent more than $6 billion over the past three years to recruit and retain service members, in what has been a growing campaign to counter enlistment shortfalls.
The financial incentives to reenlist in the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines increased dramatically from 2022 through last year, with the Navy vastly outspending the others, according to funding totals provided by the services. The overall amount of recruiting bonuses also rose steadily, fueled by significant jumps in spending by the Army and Marine Corps.
The military services have routinely poured money into recruiting and retention bonuses over the years. But the totals spiked as Pentagon leaders tried to reverse falling enlistment numbers, particularly as COVID-19 restrictions locked down public events, fairs and school visits that recruiters relied on to meet with young people. Coupled with an array of new programs, an increased number of recruiters and adjustments to enlistment requirements, the additional incentives have helped the services bounce back from the shortfalls. All but the Navy met their recruiting targets last year and all are expected to do so this year.
Officials have tied them more directly to the widespread overhauls that the services have done, including the increased financial incentives.
The Army, the military’s largest service, spent more on recruiting bonuses in 2022 and 2024 than the other services. But it was significantly outspent by the Navy in 2023, when the sea service was struggling to overcome a large enlistment shortfall.
As a result, even though the Navy is a smaller service, it spent more overall in the three years than the Army did.
The Navy also has spent considerably more than the others to entice sailors to reenlist, doling out retention bonuses to roughly 70,000 service members for each of the past three years. That total is more than double the number of troops the Army gave retention bonuses to each year, even though the Army is a much larger service.
“Navy is dedicated to retaining our most capable sailors; retention is a critical component of achieving our end-strength goals,” Adm. James Kilby, the vice chief of naval operations, told a Senate Armed Services subcommittee in March.
He said reenlistment for enlisted sailors “remains healthy,” but officers are a challenge in specific jobs, including aviation, explosive ordnance disposal, surface and submarine warfare, health professionals and naval special operations. He added that the Navy has struggled to fill all of its at-sea jobs and is using financial incentives as one way to combat the problem.
The Army has seen the greatest recruiting struggles over the past decade, and by using a range of new programs and policies, has had one of the largest comebacks. The Navy has had the most trouble more recently, and took a number of steps to expand those eligible for service and spend more in bonuses.
While the Army spends hundreds of millions each year to recruit troops, it also has relied on an array of new programs and policies to woo young people. A key driver of the Army’s rebound has been its decision to create the Future Soldier Prep Course, at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, in August 2022.
That program gives lower-performing recruits up to 90 days of academic or fitness instruction to help them meet military standards and move on to basic training. It has resulted in thousands of enlistments.
Council of Europe defends court against criticism over expulsions
ROME: The Council of Europe has defended the independence of the European Court of Human Rights, after nine member states said its interpretation of rights obligations prevented them from expelling migrants who commit crimes.
In a joint letter made public, leaders of Denmark, Italy, Austria, Belgium, Czechia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland called for a “new and open-minded conversation” about how the court interprets the European Convention on Human Rights.
“Their concern centers on rulings in the field of migration,” Council of Europe Secretary-General Alain Berset said in a statement. “These are complex challenges, and democracies must always remain open to reflection through the appropriate institutional avenues.”
However, Berset stressed that the European Court of Human Rights “is not an external body” but the legal arm of the Council of Europe, and is “bound by a Convention that all 46 members have freely signed and ratified.”
“It exists to protect the rights and values they committed to defend,” he said. “Upholding the independence and impartiality of the Court is our bedrock.”
He warned against politicizing the court.
The nine European leaders said the court’s interpretation of the convention in cases concerning the expulsion of “criminal foreign nationals” has protected the “wrong people” and placed too many limits on deciding who can be expelled.
The Council of Europe is not an EU institution and was set up in the wake of the Second World War to promote peace and democracy.
