Doubts in the majority on the anti-missile shield to be sent to Ukraine

Not even the time to convert the fifth package of military aid to be sent to Ukraine, when we are already starting to talk about the next intervention: the one with which Rome should equip Kyiv with an anti-missile shield. After all, it was the United States that asked Italy to contribute in this way to the defense strategies implemented by the Ukrainian army. For now, we are at the understandings of principle, however. Because what seemed like a formal passage is not like that, given how much and how this new shipment of military equipment is experienced within the government forces themselves.

The majority made up of the Brothers of Italy, Lega and Forza Italia have shown no willingness to give in to the requests of the allies in recent months. Yet while Prime Minister Meloni converses with the Ukrainian president himself Volodymyr Zelensky, planning a visit to Kyiv and providing all the necessary reassurances, some doubts have arisen in the coalition about the new requests rained down from Washington. According to the former Undersecretary of Defense and current Deputy Speaker of the House George Mule, a force supporter, “there is no problem of political will. The fact is that Italy has objective difficulties in getting rid of devices such as Samp/T”, he told Repubblica. “Nobody wants to say no to NATO or Washington’s requests, but we don’t have so many of those systems available. We can continue to make a valuable contribution on other fronts too, such as intelligence”.

Samp/T is a state-of-the-art system for anti-missile devices. The Italian army has five (plus one for training). But between cyclical maintenance, and deployment in some international theaters such as Kuwait and Slovakia, in practice the availability is quite limited. In addition, they are systems co-managed with France, with which it would be necessary to find an agreement for the supply of some components. For this reason there are those who have more than one perplexity about the feasibility of arriving at defining a shipment of these endowments in the shortest possible time (on January 20 the so-called Ramstein group made up of the allies meets, called to take new decisions regarding the war in Ukraine). Defense Undersecretary Matteo Perego had also spoken to Il Foglio about Samp/T. A cheaper (and less efficient) alternative would be to send a more antiquated system like the Aspide, which our armed forces are slowly decommissioning.

But the cautious attitude was also shown by the parties of the League, with the senator Claudio Borghi who always told the Largo Fochetti newspaper to stick to the line drawn by Prime Minister Meloni. However, clarifying that “we are not warmongers”, and that is, making a bit of the verse of the pacifism propagated for a long time by the Carroccio in some of the phases of the war.

Before February 24, the anniversary of the Russian invasion, Meloni should travel to the Ukrainian capital with the aim of meeting President Zelensky. It will be an important step because it will serve to reaffirm Italy’s anchorage to the resistance in Kyiv, as the prime minister has always unambiguously demonstrated since the birth of her government (but also when she was in opposition). Getting there by complying with the defensive requests of the allies would have a whole other strength for the country’s position. But it is by no means certain that it will succeed.