Italy will never send troops to Ukraine and any weapons it has supplied to Kiev should not be used deep inside Russian territory, Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said on Thursday.
He made the remarks as pressure builds on NATO members to allow Kiev use long-range Western weapons to strike targets inside Russia. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg last week urged Western arms donors to allow attacks against targets behind the conflict zone on Russian soil.
“All the weapons leaving from Italy [to Ukraine] should be used within Ukraine,” Tajani said in an interview with public broadcaster RAI.
Italy, although a staunch supporter of Ukraine, has rebuked Stoltenberg over his call for more strikes on Russia with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and other top officials accusing him of escalating tensions with Moscow.
“I don’t know why Stoltenberg said such a thing, I think we have to be very careful,” Meloni told Italy’s RAI 3 TV channel on Sunday.
Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini described the NATO chief as “dangerous.”
French President Emmanuel Macron however said on Tuesday that Kiev should be allowed to hit military sites deep inside Russia.
“We think we should allow them neutralize military sites from which missiles are fired, military sites from which Ukraine is attacked,” he told a joint news conference with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
The German leader now also supports Ukrainian strikes with Western long-range weaponry deep inside Russia, despite his earlier concerns about escalation with Moscow. Speaking alongside Macron, Scholz said that “if Ukraine is attacked, it can defend itself” under international law.
Latvian President Edgars Rinkevics told CNN on Monday that he sees “no rational pragmatic reason not to allow Ukraine to use those weapons against Russia in a way that is the most efficient.”
Ukrainian officials have claimed that the limitations imposed by the West are responsible for Russia’s recent advances in Kharkov Region. Vladimir Zelensky has repeatedly called for increased NATO involvement in the conflict and has argued that the West should not fear Russia’s reaction.
According to Moscow, claims that restrictions on the use of US munitions are in place are false and designed to maintain the illusion that the West is not part of the conflict.