Pope Francis has made a statement on the Ukraine war that has sparked fury among many of Kyiv’s supporters. Asked by a Swiss television interviewer whether the Ukraine should ‘raise the white flag’ Francis replied, ‘When you see that you are defeated, that things are not going well, you have to have the courage to negotiate,’ adding that he believed that ‘the stronger one is the one who… thinks of the people, who has the courage of the white flag.’

Blessed are the peacemakers. But Pope Francis was addressing the wrong side

After a storm of criticism, the Vatican press service put out a clarification. ‘Pope Francis is not asking Ukraine to surrender but rather calling for a ceasefire and the courage of negotiation,’ insisted Vatican spokesman office Matteo Bruni, reminding people that Francis had recently spoken of his ‘deep affection for the martyred Ukrainian people’ and called for a ‘diplomatic solution in search of a just and lasting peace.’

Unfortunately, Francis’s conflation of negotiation and surrender is profoundly unhelpful. And by framing his words in the context of Ukraine’s ‘defeat’ is specially offensive and counter-productive. ‘The biggest heartbreak of this decade is progressive Polish Catholics finding out, to their utter horror, that the “liberal hope for a renewal of the Church” Pope Francis is the Kremlin’s useful idiot,’ wrote Jakub Jaraczewski of Democracy Reporting International on X. Poland’s foreign minister Radek Sikorsky more respectfully enquired why His Holiness had not directed his remarks at Russia instead of Ukraine.

Sikorsky is entirely correct – Francis was wrong to suggest that the onus was on the Ukrainians to give up on their defence and not on the Kremlin to cease and desist their aggression. Yet the Pope has raised a crucial question: the Ukraine war will end, inevitably, with some kind of negotiation. The only alternative to negotiation would be a total defeat of Russia in the same way that Germany and Japan were totally defeated and then occupied in 1945. Not even the most enthusiastic supporters of Kyiv’s war effort suggest marching on Moscow to topple the Putin regime.

So the question is not whether there will eventually be a deal, but on what the terms of that deal will be. Currently, Ukraine fights on in the hope of decisively changing the power balance on the battlefield in order to negotiate from a position of strength. To that end, President Zelensky has announced a conscription campaign to mobilise another half a million troops for the front line. Many of those newly mobilised are reluctant to go, as shown by footage of press-gang style violence used by recruiters on the streets of Ukraine’s cities. Many of these conscripts will die.

What will they die for? As Russian continues to press its advance past the Donbas town of Avdiivka, the answer is easy: they are defending their country against invasion. But what if Russia announces a ceasefire? Or Ukraine somehow turns the tide of the war and begins to advance back into Donbas territories occupied by Moscow? There the answer becomes more complicated. Officially, the Ukrainian government’s war aim remains to liberate every scrap of territory lost to Russia since 2014 – including Donbas and Crimea. But what if the remaining population of those territories do not wish to be liberated or to live under Ukrainian rule? Since 2014 millions of people have fled Donbas and Crimea, and since 2022 the occupation authorities have systematically arrested and terrorised pro-Ukrainian residents. The occupied regions have, effectively, been ethnically cleansed.

The sad reality is that partition of Ukraine has already happened – and like the partition of India in 1947 it was bloody, unjust and violent. Does Kyiv truly intend to spend blood and treasure to forcibly reconquer those territories and try to restore the prewar status quo? If so, they will have to fight the estimated 130,000 former Ukrainian citizens from the Donbas who have been fighting on the Russian side.

Does that mean that Kyiv should just raise the white flag and surrender, as Pope Francis appeared to suggest? The answer is no – chiefly because despite lip service from Vladimir Putin to the idea of a ceasefire there is no real indication that the Kremlin is willing to any compromises in the cause of peace. That stubbornness can only really be changed by force – but not in the form of tiny advances on the more or less static line of control but through drone strikes deep inside Russia that have been taking out oil refineries, gas pipelines, battleships, arms factories and military aircraft on a nearly daily basis this year. The Russian naval base of Sevastopol has effectively been put out of action, and the Black Sea fleet has lost half of its main battleships. Though estimates vary, up to 100,000 Russians have been slaughtered. Russia’s appetite for such punishment is not limitless. Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan has offered to act as an honest broker in ceasefire talks, and US officials have, reportedly, opened back channels to discuss the eventual shape of such a ceasefire. As Samuel Charap and Jeremy Shapiro write in the influential US journal Foreign Affairs this week, ‘No negotiations yet – but It’s time to talk about talking.’

Blessed are the peacemakers. But Pope Francis was addressing the wrong side. It’s Putin who can end this war tomorrow by coming to the negotiating table, not Zelensky. And by framing the only end to the conflict as a Ukrainian surrender, the Pope has instead likely prolonged the conflict rather than helped to end it.