For several months in the run-up to this week’s European Parliamentary elections Matteo Salvini, the Italian Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Transport and Infrastructure, has accused French President Emmanuel Macron of endangering Europe and the world with his calls to send Western ground troops to Ukraine.
In his latest address at a pre-election rally in the Italian city of Bari on Tuesday June 4, which was posted on YouTube, Salvini said: “Let Macron talk about war. But I’ll say it as if he were right here tonight: Macron, you want to go to war? Then go put on a helmet, put on the vest, and go to Ukraine. Just don’t break the Italians’ balls… We want to live in peace.”
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As far back as March both Salvini and Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who both supported providing military assistance to Ukraine, said they would not agree to the sending of NATO troops to directly support Kyiv on the ground, according to a Bloomberg report.
In the same month Salvini, whose far-right Lega party is a member of Italy’s coalition government, accused Macron of being a “warmonger” at a meeting of right-wing and nationalist European leaders in Rome. He said, “I think that President Macron… represents a danger for our country and our continent.”
In his speech on Tuesday, he also condemned the countries that had authorized the use of Western supplied weapons to strike military targets on Russian territory, saying: “not a single Italian bomb or bullet will hit Russia,” adding “Rome stands for peace and does not want a Third World War on the horizon.”
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Matteo Salvini has long been one of Italy’s most vocal Putin apologists. He even posed in front of the Kremlin in 2014, giving the thumbs up while wearing a Putin T-shirt. Since forming a coalition with Giorgia Meloni, a staunch Ukraine supporter, he has had to tone down his rhetoric.
According to the Statista website Italy has provided over €1.8 billion ($2 billion) in military aid to Ukraine and as recently as Monday, June 3 announced it would send a second SAMP/T air defense system, which is capable of shooting down ballistic missiles, to Ukraine.