Dashing any hope that her “right-wing” government will shift Rome’s pro-war policy in Ukraine, Giorgia Meloni is reportedly willing to join France in providing Kyiv with its advanced Stamp-T missile defense system.

Guido Crosetto, Rome’s defense minister, told the Financial Times in an interview last week that these weapons will likely be added to Italy’s next package for the embattled country. Oleksiy Reznikov, Ukraine’s defense minister, struck an optimistic tone in Paris and said he welcomed the progress. 

The paper noted that, under the agreement, Paris would provide the rockets for the system and Rome would provide the system itself.

“Italy will meet requests that have been made by Ukraine within the limits of its possibilities,” Crosetto said, according to the paper. “We will give everything we can give without jeopardizing Italian defense. Ukraine and our allies will be happy about it.”

Crosetto also told FT that if Europe did not arm Ukraine, they would no longer be able to “guarantee respect for international rules” and that rogue nations and other bad actors would be able to get their own way. “It has already happened in Afghanistan,” Crosetto said. “If it were to happen in the heart of Europe, it would be the end of the west.”

TRENDPOST: What “Respect for international rules” is Crosetto referring to? NATO’s Yugoslavian, Libyan Wars, nearly two decades in the Afghan war and their assistance in the Iraq War that had no respect for morality, dignity, and respect? Invading foreign nations that imposed no threat to Europe?

And his bullshit that it would be the “end of the west” is the same domino theory that was sold in the Vietnam War and all the other foreign military interventions that warmongering nations launch and sell to the uninformed public.  

TRENDPOST: The Trends Journal has noted that nothing brings countries together like a good war, especially when there has been friction over a key foreign policy. (See “UNITED IN THE LOVE OF WAR: FRANCE, AUSTRALIA SENDING ARTILLERY SHELLS TO UKRAINE,” 31 Jan 2023.)

Meloni’s campaign that she would somehow turn Italy away from the EU and move the country to the right has been misplaced. She has kept many of the policies of her predecessor Mario Draghi. (See “PRO-PUTIN SPEAKER IS ELECTED IN ITALY JUST WEEKS AFTER MELONI ELECTION WIN” 18 Oct 2022 and “ITALY’S MELONI WINS BIG IN ELECTIONS, EU ISSUES WARNING” 27 Sep 2022.) 

As the CBC noted that Meloni ran as a Eurosceptic, but her first foreign visit was to Brussels to meet Ursula von der Leyen. Cecilia Emma Sottilotta, a political expert at the University of Perugia, told the news outlet that Meloni is overseeing a “right-wing government,” but compared to Matteo Salvini, from The League party, she is a moderate.

Indeed, Meloni has continued Draghi’s position on Ukrainian support. Salvini has spoken out about the economic strain that sanctions have inflicted on Italy. 

“If we get into government will we change alliances? No,” Salvini said last year. “We remain deeply, proudly, and firmly rooted in a free and democratic West that opposes war and aggression,” Salvini said. “But if we adopt an instrument to hurt the aggressor and after seven months of war it has not been hurt, at least considering a change seems legitimate to me.”

Crosetto, who is a politician from Meloni’s own Brother’s of Italy appeared to contradict himself when he talked about the risks if Russia is allowed to overrun Ukraine. He said if that were to happen, “We’d have tanks on the border with European countries.”

That is precisely Russia’s argument. The Kremlin has identified Ukraine’s potential membership into NATO as the brightest of red lines. In 2008, NATO issued a statement after its Bucharest Summit that said, “NATO welcomes Ukraine’s and Georgia’s Euro-Atlantic aspirations for membership in NATO.  We agreed today that these countries will become members of NATO.  Both nations have made valuable contributions to Alliance operations.”

Russia, already angered by NATO expansion, saw Ukraine as the “line of last resort” that would complete Russia’s encirclement.

Grigory Karasin, then-Russian deputy foreign minister, “underscored the depth of Russian opposition” to their membership, according to a WikiLeaks cable viewed by Counter Currents. In March 2008, he wrote in a cable that the Russian “political elite firmly believes” “that the accession of Ukraine and Georgia represented a direct security threat to Russia.” 

Karasin said “the future rested on the ‘strategic choice’ Washington made about ‘what kind of Russia’ it wanted to deal with—‘a Russia that is stable and ready to calmly discuss issues with the U.S., Europe, and China, or one that is deeply concerned and filled with nervousness.’”