Words such as “shameful” and “incomprehensible” greeted comments from Pope Francis that Ukraine should have “the courage of the white flag” in its two-year-old War with Russia.

During a February interview with the Swiss TV channel RSI, Francis was asked whether in Ukraine he believed the need existed to “surrender, the white flag in this case,” according to The New York Times.

Francis said fear of giving an aggressor a boost was “one interpretation, it’s true. But I believe that the strongest is the one who sees the situation, thinks of the people, and has the courage of the white flag, and to negotiate.”

Vatican representative Matteo Bruni said the white flag reference meant “cease-fire and negotiation,” not surrender. He said the white flag, to Francis, meant  “the ceasing of hostilities, the peace reached with the courage of negotiation.”

Bruni noted that Francis said later that “negotiation is never a surrender.”

Francis also called negotiation “the courage to not bring a country to its suicide.”

“When you see that you are defeated, that things are not going well, you have to have the courage to negotiate,” Francis said during the RSI interview.

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“And you are ashamed of yourself?” for holding talks, he said, noting the alternative could be “how many dead, and then? In the end it will be worse still.”

The pope said it was vital “to negotiate in time, find some country that can act as a mediator.

“Today, for example, in the War in Ukraine, there are many that want to be mediators, no? Turkey for example. Do not be ashamed to negotiate before things get worse,” he said.

Anger flowed on social media.

“Talking about the ‘white flag’ while in the same minutes Ukrainians in the occupied territories are being tortured, raped and killed is shameful,” German journalist Paul Ronzheimer said in a translated German-language post on X.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba posted on X that “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.”

“The strongest is the one who, in the battle between good and evil, stands on the side of good rather than attempting to put them on the same footing and call it ‘negotiations,’” he also wrote.

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“My Sunday morning take: One must not capitulate in face of evil, one must fight it and defeat it, so that the evil raises the white flag and capitulates,” Latvian President Edgars Rinkēvičs said in a post on X.

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan has offered to host a summit to end the  Ukraine war. To date, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said the starting point for talks is the removal of all Russian troops from Ukraine, which Russia has said is a non-starter, according to Reuters.

This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.