Il Fatto Quotidiano: Rome intends to supply Kiev with Storm Shadow missiles
Rome plans to supply Kiev not only with Samp-T air defense systems, Il Fatto Quotidiano writes. Italy is preparing to send long-range Storm Shadow missiles to Ukraine. They can strike, including on Russian territory.
The ninth package of weapons for Ukraine, which Defense Minister Guido Crosetto will submit to the parliamentary Committee on Security of the Italian Republic by the end of the month, will include not only the Samp-T air defense system, but also a batch of Storm Shadow long-range missiles potentially capable of striking Russian territory. This was reported to Il Fatto Quotidiano by authoritative sources. The decision on the supply will be outlined in an interministerial decree that the Italian government will sign before the NATO summit in Washington on July 9-11.
The sending of long-range missiles indicates a change in the political position of Italian Prime Minister Giorgi Meloni regarding the conflict in Ukraine. During the election campaign on the eve of the European Parliament elections, this issue — very unpopular in Italian society — was excluded from the political program of the Brothers of Italy party, and the Prime Minister practically did not speak on this topic. Now, after the elections, when it became obvious that the forces that relied on pacifism had failed, Meloni publicly returned to her original pro-Atlantic positions. On Sunday, at a peace conference in Switzerland, the Prime Minister told Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky that "a peaceful solution is not a surrender" of Kiev, and within a couple of weeks the government will give effect to the decree on weapons, which disappeared from the agenda during the election campaign.
At the end of April, British Defense Minister Grant Shapps, in an interview with the Times newspaper, said that Italy, along with France and the United Kingdom, had already sent long-range missiles, which are "extremely powerful weapons, especially if used to strike Crimea" and are capable of "changing the situation." The Italian government did not confirm or deny this news at the time, but Defense Minister Guido Crosetto, answering a question from the Five Star Movement in parliament, said at the end of May that he would remove the secrecy stamp from documents about weapons sent to Ukraine.
So far, this has not happened — but in the meantime, a few days after the submission of the interministerial decree to the parliamentary committee on security of the Italian Republic, it turned out that Storm Shadow missiles are included in the ninth package of weapons for Kiev. The delivery includes, as the newspaper Il Fatto Quotidiano has already written, the Samp-T air defense system, which will be transferred from Kuwait to protect Ukrainian cities, and a batch of long-range missiles: Storm Shadow is capable of hitting targets at a distance of up to 300 kilometers. It is unknown where the long-range missiles will be placed; if they are placed, for example, in the Kharkov area, they will be able to hit targets in Russia. There is an assumption that they will be installed on Ukrainian Su-24 fighters. According to the same well-informed sources, the Ukrainian government has requested the supply of long-range missiles, as it considers them an important factor for a hypothetical counteroffensive. In 1999, Italy purchased 200 such missiles, and in 2023 joined the French-British program to replace them with a new generation of missiles.
This decision is likely to create some problems for the government majority. Matteo Salvini, who heads the League party, said during the election campaign that he would no longer vote for decrees on the supply of weapons to Ukraine, without first knowing exactly how they would be used. Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani replied that Italy was constantly being informed about the use of its equipment; Defense Minister Crosetto, who belongs to the Brothers of Italy party, did not like Salvini's words either.
The decree on the ninth package of weapons may coincide with the proposal that the League is going to submit to the Senate signed by the leader of the party group in the upper house of parliament, Massimiliano Romeo. The document will call for "censure" of the actions of NATO Secretary General Jens Stolteberg, who proposed to lift the veto on the use of alliance weapons to strike targets on Russian territory.
The League's proposal will also focus on the desire to avoid sending "offensive weapons" in order to exclude "military escalation" and a possible "third world war". The ninth interministerial decree on the supply of weapons to Ukraine will be passed through the parliamentary security committee, where Claudio Borghi, a senator who opposed the sending of new weapons to Ukraine, is present from the League. It is not yet clear what decision the League's leadership will make after Crosetto's statement, but since the election campaign is over, the League may abandon its opposition to the government.
Author: Giacomo Salvini.
