Italy’s Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini leaned hard on French President Emmanuel Macron. Because of his repeated statements about the possibility of sending Western soldiers to Ukraine, he was told that he is “dangerous and needs to be treated”. The former Minister of the Interior and now the Minister of Transport expressed the same opinion about the former Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti. Italian ANSA or French Le Figaro informs.
“It makes me angry that, after Macron, today Monti is also talking about sending Italian soldiers to fight in Ukraine. These men need to heal. Those who think like this and say it as if it is a normal thing, this applies to both Macron and Monti, are dangerous. When we talk about Italian soldiers who can go to fight and die in Ukraine, I consider it a very serious matter,” Salvini said on Wednesday.
French President Emmanuel Macron has already spoken several times in recent months about the possibility of sending NATO troops to Ukraine. The big debate surrounding the sending of NATO troops to Ukraine was stirred up by Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico in February when he publicly rejected the sending of Slovak troops to Ukraine, after Macron had discreetly discussed it at a meeting of statesmen in Paris. The topic was also discussed at the subsequent V4 summit in Prague. Macron later said he would not ask NATO for help in the event of French losses if he sent troops to Ukraine. Macron talked about the possibility of sending troops again at the beginning of May. In recent days, Lithuania took up the topic, when the local parliament allowed the prime minister to deploy Lithuanian soldiers to Ukraine, for the purpose of training Ukrainian troops.
Salvini has already objected to Macron’s statements regarding Ukraine in the past and called Macron a “warmonger”. “With his words, Macron is a danger to our country and to this continent,” Salvini claimed at the March convention of the European parliamentary group Identity and Democracy, of which his League party is also a member. Among others, the head of the Portuguese national-conservative party Chega André Ventura and the leader of the French National Association Jordan Bardella took part in the congress. “I don’t want to leave my children a continent ready to enter World War III,” Salvini added.
