Russia-Ukraine war live: Zelenskiy attacks ‘virtual mediation’ after pope says Kyiv should ‘raise white flag’
Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of the war in Ukraine.
The Ukrainian government has responded angrily and vowed never to surrender after Pope Francis said the country should have “the courage to raise the white flag” and negotiate an end to the war with Russia.
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said the pontiff was engaging in “virtual mediation”. Zelenskiy made no direct reference to Francis or his comments but mentioned religious figures helping inside Ukraine.
“They support us with prayer, with their discussion and with deeds. This is indeed what a church with the people is,” Zelenskiy said in his nightly video address. “Not 2,500 km away, somewhere, virtual mediation between someone who wants to live and someone who wants to destroy you.”
Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, took a more direct approach – writing on social media on Sunday: “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.”
We will bring you more on this shortly. In other key developments:
European states imported almost double the amount of arms in 2019 to 2023 compared to 2014 to 2018, according to the thinktank, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. Ukraine emerged as the largest European arms importer after the full-scale invasion by Russia in February 2022. Ukraine was the fourth largest importer in the world between 2019 and 2023, after at least 30 states supplied military aid to Ukraine from February 2022.
The defence forces of southern Ukraine wrote on Telegram that Russia launched a massive drone attack against the city of Odesa overnight, damaging an infrastructure facility and administrative buildings. No casualties were reported.
Ukraine said Russian shelling in the east had killed three people on Sunday. A strike on a residential building in the eastern town of Myrnograd injured a dozen more people, Kyiv officials said. Ukraine also said Moscow launched missile attacks on the north-eastern Kharkiv region and sent attack drones across the centre and south of the country.
The Ukrainian film 20 Days in Mariupol, which was shot inside the besieged port city during the assault by Russian forces, has won the best documentary Oscar at the Academy Awards in Los Angeles.
A visit by France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, to Ukraine to visit Volodymyr Zelenskiy has been postponed, the third time a planned trip to the country has been pushed back since February. “The two heads of state agreed to remain in close contact, notably regarding the president’s visit to Ukraine, which should happen in the coming weeks,” the French presidency said after the two leaders spoke by phone earlier on Sunday.