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Written by Ahmed Adel, Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher
Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini criticised French President Emmanuel Macron for pushing the idea of sending European troops to fight in the conflict in Ukraine. Salvini’s comments were made on the same day that Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov once again warned that French soldiers operating in Ukraine would be legitimate targets.
“Italy is not at war with anyone. Macron, do you want to start a war? Put on a helmet, put on a vest and go to Ukraine, but don’t bother the Italians! Go and fight, but don’t bother us, people who want to live in peace,” Salvini said during a pre-election rally in the southern Italian city of Bari on June 4.
The deputy prime minister stressed that the Italians have a “clear choice” and that “no Italian bomb or bullet will hit Russia.”
Salvini also humorously slammed the French president by publishing a photo montage of him in combat uniform and armed with an assault rifle, accusing him of wanting to plunge Europe into a war with Russia.
“A military escalation and Italian soldiers on the front line under the orders of dangerous ‘bombers’? No thanks,” the nationalist leader, whose party, the LEGA, is part of Italy’s government coalition led by Giorgia Meloni, wrote on his X account.
Next to the photo that shows Macron as a combatant with a helmet, dressed in a uniform with the colours of the European Union and a tactical vest, there is a portrait of Salvini at an election rally, with his arm raised and a rosary in his hand.
“Yes to Italy’s commitment to peace, to the Constitution’s repudiation of war, inspired by our collective moral conscience and our Christian tradition,” Salvini added.
Former General Roberto Vannacci, candidate to the European Parliament for the LEGA party, in the same vein as Salvini, said NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has no sole authority to send weapons to Ukraine and that EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell cannot speak for all European Union members.
“Politically speaking, NATO is not in a state of war. All decisions concerning weapons supply [to Ukraine] have been made by individual countries. The secretary-general has no authority in the matter. He is a bureaucrat, a representative of an organisation that is not directly involved in the conflict. However, it looks like he speaks for all [member states], as he has overcome the sovereignty of every state in the matter of their participation in the Ukrainian conflict,” Vannacci told a briefing in Rome on June 4.
The European parliamentary candidate added that Borrell, like Stoltenberg, expresses a joint position without consulting the authorities of individual European Union countries.
Although Meloni is a staunch supporter of Ukraine and has frequently met with Volodymr Zelensky, it is evident that there is growing backlash in Italy, especially since it was not anticipated when pledges of support were made that Macron would escalate the situation by pushing to send European troops to fight and die in a futile war effort. This is especially alarming for Italians since Moscow has repeatedly warned that foreign troops operating in Ukraine are legitimate targets of the Russian military.
On the same day as Salvini’s statements, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov warned that all French soldiers on Ukrainian territory, both instructors and mercenaries, would be legitimate targets of the Russian Armed Forces.
“As far as the French instructors are concerned, I have reason to believe that they are already working in Ukraine, and there is a lot of proof. Whoever they are, members of the French Armed Forces or simply mercenaries, they are absolutely legitimate targets for our Armed Forces,” he said during a joint press conference with his counterpart from the Republic of Congo, Jean-Claude Gakosso.
At the beginning of May, Macron said in an interview with The Economist that he does not rule out sending troops to Ukraine if he receives a request from Kiev and if Russia breaks the front line. The statements caused controversy, with many major European powers, including Italy, Germany and Spain, disavowing Macron’s idea.
Former United States Defense official Stephen Bryen stated, in an article also published in May, but in Asia Times, that France sent the first group of around 100 Foreign Legion soldiers to Ukraine, out of around 1,500 that were supposed to arrive in Ukraine. According to Bryen, the first contingent, which includes artillery and reconnaissance experts, was deployed to Slaviansk in the Donbass region, in support of the 54th Mechanized Brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, against the advances of the Russian military.
Despite being a European pariah, Macron remains undeterred and will host Zelensky in Paris on June 7 to discuss Ukraine’s needs. This was met with criticism, with the leader of the Republicans in parliament, Olivier Marleix, saying it was “inappropriate” to invite Zelensky to speak just days before the upcoming European elections. However, Macron has never cared for appropriateness and is instead obsessed with the idea of projecting France to have greater global influence and input at the expense of Russia, a strategy that has clearly failed and instead shows his weakness and desperation.
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dont kid yourself salami. macaroni will never go anywhere without his husbands consent!
never heard before. are are you trying to raise level?
and who cares if a retаrded like you heard before or not, just die
in another world i would slay you
i would martyr and mortify
in another world i would murder
i’d confess and i’d do my time
in another world i would sing you
a crimson lullaby
but all i am doing is waiting
i’m waiting for you
waiting for you to die
he’s trying to raise the collective consciousness, not trying to raise the brain dead – so you can ignore him.
dead granny with a peni
great job mocking macron salvini!
fsb gave to these european right wing idiots some money.russia itself is fascist state. only friends russia has in europe and north america are fragmentation of racist fascist populists.
i am a north american and i have no problem with russia. i am a friend of russia.
cry more made up nonsense, faggot. you live in a bubble. in my town in the us, almost no one supports your ukrainian proxy war. most people in the state do not support it. watching your ever increasing desperation as your nato puppet government gets their shit pushed in, is pretty amusing.
i just feel bad for the russian and ukrainian regular people suffering for political games.
those “racist fascist populists” are the people who are going to take power in the western world and put an end to leftism forever in the civilized world.
there is no “leftism” and there is no civilized world. rule by billionaire capitalists is hardly a phenomenon of the left.
i don’t mind leftism so much but this out of control woke agenda and these faux leftist loony tunes blindly supporting banderite fascist regimes guilty of war crimes since 2014 because their ignorance surpasses a danish fish monger from the dark ages is really getting my blood a’boiling.
i hope so. but how ? by putting a paper in a box ? if tomorrow the afd was elected in germany, all the other parties would destabilize the country, create a civil war and ask the eu/us to intervene. in france it’s far worse : the jews sucker marine lepen announced she will not be an ally for afd. in italy meloni was elected and what happened ? nothing. in greece far right leaders are put in jail. time is running out for natives europeans.
what are your views on c-14, svboda, oun-b, and the rest of the entirely fascist ukrainian nationalist movement?
he probably doesn’t know (or care) that svoboda’s original name was the social nationalist party (aka national socialist in reverse ..nazi party) and its two founders, parubiy and tyahnybok are proud followers of nazi ideology. parubiy chummed it up with congress and tyahnybok chummed it up with mccain.
america is a nation led by morons and nogoodniks.
did you forget that there was a vid during maidan of the trunk of a car being opened and a sniper rifle found, when parubiy watching it all, orders that the trunk be closed and they be sent on their way?
all i remember is that idiot bojo hosting some azov nazis and holding up their flag with a nazi wolfshook prominently displayed on a black third reich eagle silhouette background.
what the hell is wrong with you brits? taken too many cricket bats to the head?
did you see that photo of shoigu in short sleeves with the nazi tats and the swastika on his wrist bracelet?
oh, sorry – that was zaluzhny. my bad.
don’t forget your 8th booster frantisek !
the french they may not realize but the anglos hate them too, i never heard them lot say anything positive about the french they may as well be the next in line for america’s insatiable appetite for new lands and genocide bonne chance!!
i always preferred the french to the english, mostly for their cuisine, but now i despise them equally.
financial times: “gazprom badly hurt by ukraine war, says company-commissioned report”…… so they admitted – gazprom is hanging on the ropes and very badly badly beaten.
russia is pumping out lng that doesn’t rely on the us-style fracking ponzi scheme. the russian share of lng exports to europe is growing. a new day, a new nafomosexual failure on sf.
don’t worry, frankenstein. it’s still making a profit.
that was a based statement. i like salvini
“-all females in my cabinet are women. you can ask president harris”
harris for president! the current laughing heard round the world would turn into a deafening uproar.
that’s the place for france’s next bonaparte – frontline avdeevka!
avdeevka is liberated and people here are restoring all the ruined. meat grinder is now working in volchansk, near ocheretino and many different points, but these two are main. macron may go to new york — crazy hohols renamed town of novgorodskoe to new york. not a joke.
between the ua, us and eu, it’s hard to keep track of who’s giving who bj’s on any given day.
look at one of the maps and you’ll see there are quite a bit of brouhaha around avdeevka, so not quite finished! the ukies are holding on to the last man standing and it won’t be zelensky!
avdeevka fell long ago. it’s the brouhaha around chasov yar that you’re referring to.
i’m watching reviews every day and do checking before say. front from avdeevka moved to krasnogorovka and ocheretino – center of nearby heights which allow to advance in several directions.
time for italian fence sitting is coming to an end.
hard to get a decision in either eu or nato unless they are all aboard so good for the italians and pity the next french bonaparte (who by the way had much better taste in women than macron)!
macron is a uk’s puppet and a psychopath.
definitely not all in order upstairs with that dweeb.
good to hear, put macroleon on her place lol
good, finally an eu politician with good sense and cahones, unlike the others.
or cojones, but since he’s italian…….coglioni