Calenda, trip to Ukraine: “I’m going to Lviv and Kiev in two weeks”. This is why the sending of arms is discussed on the 13th

“I will be in Ukraine, not this week, but the next. Here is a country where people are fighting for their freedom, dying of cold and hunger and we are quibbling whether to help them or not.” This was announced in Ancona by the leader of the Third Pole Charles Calenda.

On 13 December the resolution on arms

The timing anticipated by the former minister – not this week but the one after – coincides with a date, Tuesday 13 December, already baptized and dedicated to Ukraine: the decree passed on Thursday in the Council of Ministers grants the extension until 31 December 2023 of the authorization “to cede” “military means, materials and equipment” to Kiev. But the same decree provides that there is a preventive act addressing the Chambers. A new resolution, in short, like the one that Parliament voted unanimously immediately after the first Russian bombings in Kiev. A resolution that will precede the conversion of the decree and that will be discussed on December 13, with the minister Guido Crosetto in the classroom. The occasion could bring out the distinctions in the majority and in the opposition.

Calenda: I was invited by the mayor of Lviv

“Let me be clear, the Ukrainians are fighting for us and they must be helped. We must also go there if one can. In the first phase of the war they all went there and then they forgot about it. The mayor of Lviv invited me, I will go to Lviv and Kiev”. And then: “Joseph Conte Do you repeat that a diplomatic solution is needed? Did you find it? Why repeating that a diplomatic solution must be found without explaining what it is is a bit like when Miss Universe wins and says she wants world peace.

Calenda: “Disgusted by certain rhetoric”

“I too, like Conte, want peace in the world but you have to explain how – continued Calenda – If ‘the how’ is disarming the Ukrainians, I will make them defeat and get Putin to Kiev, it is not right”. “I’m a little disgusted by the rhetoric of those who say ‘I want peace’ without explaining how they want peace and I’m a little disgusted by those who say ‘I want peace but I’ll take off your weapons to defend yourself’: that’s not peace, you want Moscow to win, which means having Russia on NATO borders; and the risk of a direct war with NATO would increase, not decrease”.

Arms in Kiev, what the NATO decree says

Means, materials and military equipment will be supplied to Ukraine to fight the Russian invasion, even throughout 2023. After the go-ahead from the Chamber, on Thursday the Council of Ministers approved the so-called NATO decree, to extend “until 31 December 2023” and “subject to guidance from the Chambers”, the provision already introduced after the start of the war by Draghi government (and which was expiring at the end of 2022). Therefore, on mailings, the line is of continuity with respect to the provisions of the previous executive. Precisely between the end of this year and the beginning of next, the sixth aid decree for Ukraine could arrive on the government table: this time the need expressed by Kiev, with the arrival of winter and the intensification of bombing at points strategic, is to make use of air defense missile systems to protect the country’s infrastructure from Russian attacks coming from the air.