Italian President Meloni Hosts Ukrainian President Zelensky to Discuss War, Sanctions, and Defence Cooperation
We have to be rather quick as President Zelensky has a very tight schedule and President Mattarella , to whom we apologise in advance , is awaiting him at the Quirinale Palace. In any case, I am very pleased to welcome President Zelensky, my friend Volodymyr, to Rome once again, and to have had the opportunity to review with him the progress of the negotiation process, the next steps to be taken to achieve an end to the war in Ukraine, and how to continue our support for the nation under attack.
As I have said many times before, we must always remember that the conditions to work towards a just and lasting peace in Ukraine exist today thanks above all to the tenacious resistance of the Ukrainian people and also to the firm support the West has provided over these years. These two factors have prevented Russia from carrying out its intended plan: to invade the entire nation, make it surrender in a matter of days, and install a puppet government to replace the one democratically elected by Ukrainians.
Over the last four years, in the face of this attempt, Europe's and Italy's position has remained the same: standing with Kyiv, its people and its institutions. We believe that supporting Ukraine is not only a moral duty, but also a strategic necessity, because it is not just Kyiv's dignity, freedom and independence that are at stake but also Europe's security, in the broadest sense of the term.
This also means that the diplomatic efforts to achieve a just and lasting peace directly involve Europe. Italy intends to continue doing its part to reach shared solutions that protect Kyiv's sovereignty and ensure the solidity of the Euro-Atlantic alliance, because a divided West, a split Europe, would be the only real gift we could give to Moscow.
Within the G7 and the European Union, Italy will continue to promote economic pressure on the Russian Federation, which is still showing no concrete signs of progress in the negotiation process, continues to attack civilians, and keeps targeting essential civilian infrastructure. From this point of view, the twentieth package of sanctions Europe is preparing to adopt is an important step to further reduce the revenues fuelling Russia's war machine.
Likewise, we will keep working to provide the financial support decided upon by the European Council, which is a fundamental tool to guarantee Ukraine's survival, because a possible financial crisis for Kyiv would clearly also cause incalculable harm to the stability of Europe as a whole. With President Zelensky, we also discussed Ukraine's European Union accession path, which Italy supports, as is the case for the other European nations that have long been on this journey.
I would like to mention, with a touch of pride, what the 'Sistema Italia' has put in place to help the Ukrainian people deal with the emergencies and the most difficult periods, such as this past winter. As requested, we promptly provided industrial boilers and power generators to address the blackouts and supply disruptions caused by Russian attacks.
