Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni on Tuesday ruled out the possibility of Italy sending fighter jets to Ukraine, after Italian media suggested the possibility in recent days.
“It is necessary to say things as they are: at the moment the delivery of aircraft is not on the table,” said Giorgia Meloni in Kiev, responding to a Ukrainian journalist, at a joint press conference with the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky.
The minister added that the final decision “will be taken with international partners”, and he reaffirmed that his government and other allies are “focusing on the issue of anti-aircraft systems at this stage”.
The prime minister recalled that Italy has just approved the sixth military support package for Ukraine, which includes anti-aircraft systems to help Ukraine protect critical infrastructure, such as the power grid, from Russian bombing.
Friday marks the first anniversary of the Russian military offensive in Ukraine, which began in the early hours of February 24, 2022.
A year after the start of the military offensive, carried out under the pretext of the need to “denazify” and “demilitarize” Ukraine for Russian security, Putin has not achieved the goal of complete control of Donbass, even if he succeeded a land corridor connecting eastern Ukraine with the annexed Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea (in 2014), across the coast of the Sea of Azov.
In recent weeks, Ukrainian and Western sources have warned of the start of a new major Russian offensive, a scenario that has prompted calls to increase arms supplies to Kiev.
In response to the Russian offensive, the international community has imposed unprecedented political and economic sanctions on Russia.
Source: DN
