Melons among the rubble of Bucha and Irpin. Emotion and commitment: “We will stay by your side”

After the overnight journey and the arrival in Kyiv, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni visited Bucha at 12.30, the city where the Russian army massacred about 400 Ukrainians last March, before moving an hour later to Irpin, the center of heavy bombing at the start of the war.

Speaking with the Bucha city prosecutor, the prime minister said that “Italy has been there from the beginning and will continue to be there until the end”. The prime minister visited the Orthodox church of Sant’Andrea near the mass graves. She stopped to visit the photo exhibition displaying photos of the massacre perpetrated by the Russians in the unconquered city: the victims in plastic bags, the mutilated bodies. She shook her head, wrapped her black coat around her, moved by what she saw.

Then there is Irpin, the second stage. Among the gutted buildings, the acrid smell of corpses that never goes away. There are structures of which only the skeleton can be seen, others under construction. Parked cars are companions to piles of sheet metal. It is the crib of the invasion a few kilometers from the capital, assault and resistance. Giorgia Meloni passes from here to this handkerchief which remains among the places most affected by the bombs. Upon arrival, the regional authorities following the convoy explain what happened to the Prime Minister. There is a moment of concrete solidarity: Meloni’s delivery of generators to support critical infrastructures. There are representatives of Italian associations active in Kyiv. Precisely in Irpin, in this postcard riddled with machine gun shots, Mario Draghi stopped last June, during a visit with Macron and Scholz. Meloni moves in a surreal landscape: after the attacks there are those who find it intact and have returned home. From time to time people stroll with their heads down. They get out of the cars, they enter the house. They are not attracted by curiosity.

Speaking on Ukrainian TV, Meloni declared that he sees in the tormented city “a people who are fighting to resist” and added that “it is different to read numbers and instead see the lives of people destroyed for no reason”. The prime minister also announced that she will meet President Zelensky: “I’ll ask him what else we can do to lend a hand” because that of the Ukrainians is “a battle they are fighting for us too, and it is important that people know it”.

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• Simone Canettieri

• Viterbese, 1982. On paper since September 2020 as editor. Eight years for the Messenger (in the news and for the politician). Even earlier in Emilia Romagna as a correspondent (between the birth of the M5s and the earthquake), in Florence as editor of the Nuovo Corriere (dealing with crime and judicial news every morning). He started in Viterbo at 19 with skating and minor football, then at 26 he got his first job. He has written for Oggi, Linkiesta, travel and gastronomy inserts. He collaborated with RadioRai, but also with local television and radio stations that never paid. Agnes 2020 Award for printed paper in Italy.